Lots of Math Manipulatives! A glance at DDs work.

 Here’s a quick glance DD’s math work for the day (she just turned 5).  I had her set up the numbers.  She counted from 10 to 100 several times before I had her build double-digit numbers.

I put a large handful of tiles in front of her and asked her to figure out whether there were an odd or even number of tiles (meanwhile, ED is making a tower!!).  Also, next to her foot you can see the tally sticks. We worked on tally sticks from 1 to 9. She also had to slide over 1-10 beads.  We’re working on her visualization of 6 as 5 and 1, 7 as 5 and 2 etc.  There’s a song that goes with that (from Right Start Math) that she’s been learning.
Here she’s counting by 2s to 20. (The tiles were left over from another activity.)

6 Responses

  1. As I was passing through several homeschool blogs I came across yours as a favorite of another homeschool mother's. It is absolutely wonderful! You have such a creative and engaging way of educating your kids that I can see why your ideas are inspirational to others. Have you ever thought of adding Latin to your curriculum as well? Latin is the basis of the Romance languages which include French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and other lesser known dialects. I was educated through the Christian classical tradition and learned Latin for several years. I can tell you that it has made all the difference in the world when it comes to my education and in learning other languages. Not only did I learn the ins and outs of English grammar, but also sentence structures, spelling and the tools to study other languages. What's great about Latin is that it is the foundation for all of the languages listed above. After I graduated from high school I went to Italy for a couple of weeks on holiday. After a week I could understand conversations going on around me simply because I knew Latin. It's a great and wonderful foundational tool for anyone's education. Until 100 years ago, it was a standard part of every student's education. Learning Latin not only teaches you to understand your own language better, but it also opens up a whole new door into the wisdom of the great fathers of history. So many doors open to you when you can read and understand what was the standardized language for all academic works for 1,500 years and more! I wanted to tell you about Visual Latin. It's a great combination of videos and exercises for learning Latin. We've tried to make learning the language as enjoyable as possible. A lot of this has to do with our teacher, Dwane Thomas. Dwane actually taught me Latin so I can testify to his skill as a teacher. He's great and makes what could be dense work into an enjoyable journey learning a language that is foundational to Western history, philosophy, history, art, and science. The great thing about the program is that you can work through it as slowly or quickly as you like. It's portable, so you can do lessons anywhere and if you miss anything you can simply rewind and watch again. Right now we offer a full semester's course in 2 discs. Each disc contains 10 lessons. You can actually preview a lesson here if you have a few minutes. http://www.visuallatin.com/watchI wanted to offer you a 25% discount for our DVD set. I'd love to hear back from you. If you're interested, please email me at info@visuallatin.com. I hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I look forward to hearing from you.Thanks,JessicaVisual Latin

  2. As I was passing through several homeschool blogs I came across yours as a favorite of another homeschool mother's. It is absolutely wonderful! You have such a creative and engaging way of educating your kids that I can see why your ideas are inspirational to others. Have you ever thought of adding Latin to your curriculum as well? Latin is the basis of the Romance languages which include French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and other lesser known dialects. I was educated through the Christian classical tradition and learned Latin for several years. I can tell you that it has made all the difference in the world when it comes to my education and in learning other languages. Not only did I learn the ins and outs of English grammar, but also sentence structures, spelling and the tools to study other languages. What's great about Latin is that it is the foundation for all of the languages listed above. After I graduated from high school I went to Italy for a couple of weeks on holiday. After a week I could understand conversations going on around me simply because I knew Latin. It's a great and wonderful foundational tool for anyone's education. Until 100 years ago, it was a standard part of every student's education. Learning Latin not only teaches you to understand your own language better, but it also opens up a whole new door into the wisdom of the great fathers of history. So many doors open to you when you can read and understand what was the standardized language for all academic works for 1,500 years and more! I wanted to tell you about Visual Latin. It's a great combination of videos and exercises for learning Latin. We've tried to make learning the language as enjoyable as possible. A lot of this has to do with our teacher, Dwane Thomas. Dwane actually taught me Latin so I can testify to his skill as a teacher. He's great and makes what could be dense work into an enjoyable journey learning a language that is foundational to Western history, philosophy, history, art, and science. The great thing about the program is that you can work through it as slowly or quickly as you like. It's portable, so you can do lessons anywhere and if you miss anything you can simply rewind and watch again. Right now we offer a full semester's course in 2 discs. Each disc contains 10 lessons. You can actually preview a lesson here if you have a few minutes. http://www.visuallatin.com/watchI wanted to offer you a 25% discount for our DVD set. I'd love to hear back from you. If you're interested, please email me at info@visuallatin.com. I hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I look forward to hearing from you.Thanks,JessicaVisual Latin

  3. Hello Jessica,Thank you for your kind words. While I agree that language is an important component of education, I doubt if I'll include Latin in our homeschool curriculum — or at least no time soon. I have started teaching the kids German as I speak/understand that language (more or less). I will pass along your website to my sister. She homeschools her three children, who are now in jr. high and high school and she is teaching them Latin. My sister is a medievalist (ie. she researches and writes about medieval history) and currently reads Latin like a pro because of all of the research she is doing for her latest book (on medieval nuns)! Oh–and a funny story about Latin. When my husband's father was in Baghdad 35 or 40 years ago working as a diplomat he spoke Arabic, but the clerics he needed to communicate with only spoke Farsi. They both knew Latin, though, and so the managed to speak and make themselves understood through their common Latin-language abilities!Kind regards,Liesl

  4. Hello Jessica,Thank you for your kind words. While I agree that language is an important component of education, I doubt if I'll include Latin in our homeschool curriculum — or at least no time soon. I have started teaching the kids German as I speak/understand that language (more or less). I will pass along your website to my sister. She homeschools her three children, who are now in jr. high and high school and she is teaching them Latin. My sister is a medievalist (ie. she researches and writes about medieval history) and currently reads Latin like a pro because of all of the research she is doing for her latest book (on medieval nuns)! Oh–and a funny story about Latin. When my husband's father was in Baghdad 35 or 40 years ago working as a diplomat he spoke Arabic, but the clerics he needed to communicate with only spoke Farsi. They both knew Latin, though, and so the managed to speak and make themselves understood through their common Latin-language abilities!Kind regards,Liesl

  5. zerosumruler says:

    I thought you may be interested in a math manipulative that I invented called the ZeroSum Ruler. it makes working with negative numbers much easier and more concrete. My graduate thesis results showed a 62% decrease in student error on a delayed-retention test one month after the last of three activities with the ruler. Before the ruler, I was getting a lot of "-22 + 5 = -27, etc., where my students were confusing addition with the rules of multiplication. You can check out my site at http://zerosumruler.wordpress.com/

  6. zerosumruler says:

    I thought you may be interested in a math manipulative that I invented called the ZeroSum Ruler. it makes working with negative numbers much easier and more concrete. My graduate thesis results showed a 62% decrease in student error on a delayed-retention test one month after the last of three activities with the ruler. Before the ruler, I was getting a lot of "-22 + 5 = -27, etc., where my students were confusing addition with the rules of multiplication. You can check out my site at http://zerosumruler.wordpress.com/

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