What do you do all day long? - Math and Numbers

On this episode: Math.

We rarely have a day where we get everything done all at once.  Typically we have a day that focuses on either reading or math as our main table work.  Today was a numbers sort of day.

Little Lady, up first (always).

We do lots of sorting and counting right now.  Here I just grabbed a scrap paper and made circles for her to sort the bears in.  I don't have any type of plan for her, we just kind of go with the flow.



Cutting was up next, another favourite activity.


And cutting wouldn't be any fun if you couldn't paste it to something!


While she was doing that, I made a tally chart for her.  I grabbed a random handful of bears from the tin and gave them to her to sort.


She placed them on the chart...


And then we looked at them to see which one colour had more, and then we counted them. She really enjoyed this activity.


Then ballet called and she felt the need to go dance, so I set her up in a different room with a cd player a wand and she was off.

Little Man is next!  We did our site word flash cards of the week and our reading first, as always. Then I started him with the same tally chart, only he got a bigger handful of bears and had to count the bears and stamp the chart based on how many bears of each colour.






While he did that, I made this.  He picked "one representative from each colour" (his words, not mine) and put them on the appropriate circle. In this picture he is actually telling me to stop taking pictures and give him the paper already so he could get started.



He didn't like that there wasn't one "winner" colour that had all eight, so he added some to his pile and did the whole thing over again, but using the worksheet the way his sister had.



And then he said enough with the pictures already.

While he was re-doing his activity, I threw together some addition questions.  He floored me today because he didn't use counters, he just added everything up in his mind.  The number line across the top is so he can check up on his numbers if he is unsure as to which way they point.



Some other things we do for math type work is building.  It is really more of a problem solving skill, but I like to call it math, ha ha. Our Lincoln Log, blocks and Tinker Toys are three toys, besides lego, that get the most play in our house.



Here Little Man drew a picture of a castle and then used the blocks to re-create it. It is kind of hard to see on the picture because it is in pencil, but the drawing even has the block shapes on it.



Building a bridge.  We had actually built two other ones before this one that were too weak and didn't stand up, and then the kids figured out how to make it stronger by adding more sticks.  But I couldn't take pictures of the first two because my battery was charging.  This is the final product.





So that in a nutshell is what a "Math" day looks like.

Now we are going to play in the snow (for the third time)!

Enjoy the wintry weather!!

Cheers,
Marina