Hands-on Math

Old Crow is spending the day at our local Christian school since they open Fridays to homeschoolers...which I think is an awesome program!  He joins the other Kindergarten class and takes PE, art, music, critical thinking, and sign language.  He is having a great time (but it hurt my heart a little to leave him; I love having him home).

Here is what we've been up to in math lately:

To allow Old Crow the opportunity to physically apply his math skills, we have a center or workbox activity each day that supplements and practices certain skills.  He is definitely "math minded" like his daddy so he enjoys and looks forward to these games and activities.  Here is a sampling of our activities:

We use felt shapes and the felt board for a variety of skills...addition word problems, sorting, comparing groups, etc.  It always ends up being told in story form...this boy loves to create stories. :)

We practice money quite frequently as well.  Counting coins to match the amount on the piggy bank, making trades with pennies and dimes, sorting coins, and setting up a toy store and letting him "buy" things with his money...these are a few of the ways we apply money skills.

One versatile and fun manipulative is the Education Cubes.  They are a set of photo cubes I bought from Amazon and then I insert a printed custom sheet into each slot on the cube.  A homeschooling mom created this idea and the inserts can be bought for an inexpensive lifetime fee through the website Education Cubes.  I just print the ones I need, insert them, and I'm ready to go with a game he loves!  I have used them to practice sight words, blending, and other reading skills.  For math we have rolled them and then compared the two numbers to practice greater than and less than.  Number recognition and addition are also fun ways to use them.  

Other fun ways to get our math brain churning are "puzzles."  I found a poster online with pirates counting by 10s.  I laminated it and then cut it into strips.  I added magnets to the back, and now we have a magnetic puzzle that reinforces his skip counting skills.   Ahoy Matey!  ;)  By the way, I bought myself a laminator with my Christmas money.  I had intended to use this for house purchases, but I really needed my own laminator.  And it makes my day to use it!!!  I often create reasons just to laminate something!  Can I laminate anything for you? :)

Jenny