Reinventing Math

1 March 2012

Today we reviewed skip counting by 3's. As I said before, Ra has 3-30 down pretty well and when I asked her today if we could try to go to 60 she went all the way to 99! I am so impressed. I really could hardly believe she needed very little help to do it either! But because the pattern repeats itself and we talked about it as much as we did she picked up on the rest of it like it was a cake walk!

When we finished our counting review I let Ra play some more on the computers with her brothers and I watched a YouTube video on Jean Peaget's theory on kids reinventing math. I had never heard of this idea before but it make complete sense after seeing it in action as it is on the video I watched. Here it is so you can see for yourself what you think. I was amazed. (This is the first part of a three part video)

Source: youtube.com via Candiss on Pinterest

When I was first teaching Ra math in K and 1st grade using the Utah Virtual Academy K12 program I wanted to explain to her all of the different ways I see the problem to make it easier to add or subtract. But this isn't how the text books taught and so I believe I was sending my poor little girl too many mixed signals about how to solve a math equation.

After watching this video I pulled out a chalkboard and chalk and sat down with Ra and went through some similar exercises. I wrote an equation and had Ra answer it, then I would have her explain how she came up with that answer. I would then explain to her what I do to get the answer. This is a much more fluid way of teaching math and it also helps improve cognitive thinking, deductive reasoning etc. Very fun exercise, it would be fun to do with a few more kids involved though.

Ra decided she wanted to make some money so she started drawing pictures to sell. She is becoming quite the little artist. Her pricing method was creative, if not a little exaggerated. She counted how many colors she used in the picture and then charged a dollar for each color. So if the picture had six colors it would cost $6.00.

The rest of the day I spent cooking, cleaning and balancing our budget for March.Not my favorite day, but it kinda is too. I like budgeting, it gives me a sense of control and stability, though I also get to see all of the frivolous mistakes we made with our money over the past week(s).

We didn't read anything tonight. I am getting behind on everything with the hubby being home. Hopefully I can get caught up on Monday. This weekend is super full and I know I will not be able to get caught up then, I will just be lucky if we don't get more behind.

Valentine Mathematical Symmetry

11 February 2012

Today we made our Valentine's card. It was a fun and super messy but easy to clean up. I started out with having Ra help me figure out if we had enough paper doilies for how many cards we wanted to make. We wrote a list of all the cousins and friends and grandparents we would be making cards for. We agreed that each cousin would only get one card from all four of the kids, the friends would get one card as well. The grandparents however would get one card from each of the kids that could make them on their own, (leaving Em out of the count). The initial count left us with 32 cousins, 6 friends, and 8 grandparents. So our equation looks something like this (32 + 6) + (8 x 3) = 62 . SIXTY TWO! Boy I sure am glad we aren't adding another 60 cards to that with school classes for Ra and El!

I showed Ra the packages of doilies. I had one package of red, one of white and one of pink. There were 16 doilies per package. I asked her to figure out how many doilies we had to make cards with. She added 16 + 16 + 16 and I explained that this was the same thing as 16 x 3. I then asked her if we had enough doilies to use one for every card. She said no, that 48 < 62. I then had her figure out how many more doilies we would need to be able to have one for each card. With an answer of 14 I asked her how many more packages we would need. She answered with one package. We went to the store to get the last needed package.

Finally beginning, we used construction paper, scissors, glue and the doilies to make the cards. I showed the kids how to make a heart by folding the paper in half and cutting half a heart shape around the fold. I used this as an opportunity to explain symmetry. We had fun coming up with other shapes and patterns to cut out using symmetry.  We made hearts, diamonds, rectangles, accordion people, and flowers just to name a few.

We continued the observation of symmetrical objects into dinner time and I plan on continuing to point it out whenever we see it throughout the year.    

Tonight we read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett again. And hey, I even got some reading in of Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton Porter.