Friday, March 1, 2013

Fun with Math - Living Math

With Dumpling, when she was younger, there was a complete lack of interest in numbers. Books on the other hand, are a totally different thing. She'd get lost in them and would ask me to read more than 10 titles to her at a go.

Now, when it came to numbers, as there was no magical journey to go on and she did not quite find it applicable / useful at that point, she was not interested in wanting to try. Getting her to recite number sequence was futile as she refuses to 'entertain' me to go beyond 20 up till earlier this year. *sigh*

So it became a personal challenge for me to look for fun ways to make Math enjoyable, interesting and applicable. Hence the Fun with Math series was born.

In an earlier Math homelearning post, Dumpling and I had fun with the Supermarket printables which I made.  I have always been talking and discussing things when we are outdoors so it is more of an incidental learning approach. So it was time to head out to the "real world" where mum handed over some duties!

Here's 3 fun ideas on Living Math! :)

:: Reading of price tags
I introduced to Dumpling how prices are being labelled where sometimes, decimal points are used while during other incidents, prices can also be displayed like below where the "cents" are underlined.

After reading the price tags, I asked her to go on a mini "hunt" to identify the item with specific value - 90cents, $1.50, etc.

Preschool Math

:: Weight
I also took the opportunity to introduce her to the use of a scale and got her to identify the numbers on it and then to add on tomatoes to the scale till it was at 500gm. This allows her to learn estimation as well as to develop an idea how tomatoes of different sizes vary in weight, etc. She had loads of fun with this and could not bear to leave the scale! LOL

Preschool Math

:: Handling of money
I started delegating the "coin" duty to her so whenever we are outside, she'd have to help me search for the right coins, add them up and hand them over to the vendor. Mind you, not everyone was so ever patient waiting for the little ones to pass the coins over so a word of caution there!

Preschool Math

8 comments:

  1. Coooool we are also slowly including math in our learning journey

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    1. Hey Adora, you girls are doing great too! I saw the monsters activity and I love it! :)

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  2. You did a great job! I wish we had used a more hands on approach earlier with one of my twins-I think she would have really benefitted from it! Oh, well I'll have learnt my lesson with my younger two. Lots and lots of hands on maths!!

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    1. Hi dear, thank you for popping by. It is a learning journey as a parent and as a homeschooling parent, I guess we may have more areas to look into too. And yes, loads and loads of hands on Math seems to be the right direction so far with my kid too!

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  3. Awesome ideas! Hands-on and real life has so much more meaning than those workbooks. Great job.

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    1. Hi jmommymom, thank you for popping by and for the lovely comment. Will head over to yours soon! :)

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  4. I'd like to share with you some Maths flash cards that I made (get them here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Flashcardgames).

    Here is a really fun game to try. Deal out all the cards to the players (the more the merrier). Place the cards face down in a pile in front of each player. Next, each player choose a name of an animal (or from any subject). The game is very simple. All players open the top card at the same time.

    The goal is to call out the name of the player with the highest answer. For eg if you chose the name Hippo and your card has the highest answer, all players including yourself compete to see who shouts out 'Hippo' first. That player then collects all the open cards in that round. If more than one player has the highest answer then players must call the names of each player with the highest answer.

    The player with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.

    The explanation may sound complicated but it's actually easy to play and very fun too.

    Get free cards here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Flashcardgames (you can also find thousands of free and priced teacher-created learning materials).

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    Replies
    1. Hi Esther, thank you for popping by and for the link! I am downloading the pack as we speak! Thank you for sharing :)

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