Easter Egg Addition

Apr. 17, 2014

We're currently working on cementing Seth's addition and subtraction facts. I try to throw in a bunch of different games to keep things interesting. Since it was a few days away from Easter, I thought I'd try having him match Easter Egg equations.

I wrote one equation on the top half of an egg and another (different equation, same sum) on the bottom half. For example: 5+5=? on the top and 7+3=? on the bottom. Then I separated all the pieces and had him match up the correct equations.

He actually caught two eggs that I somehow messed up (they didn't have matches--not sure what I did).  And yes, he enjoyed this activity about as much as it appears in this picture. Eggs or not, he still knows "work" when he sees it!

Tallying

Apr. 4, 2014

A simple way to practice tallying! I gave Seth a pile of multi-colored fuzzballs and had them sort them by color:

Then he counted each pile and tallied his results: 

Simple and easy!

Measuring Volume

Mar. 24-25, 2014

Next up on the measuring agenda--measuring volume. We started with measuring rice and using this worksheet (I simplified it a bit for Seth).  Not sure how much he really understood, but at least it's an introduction!

Then we moved on to measuring with water. I had Seth pick 5 containers of different sizes and fill them with water. Then we dumped the water into a measuring cup and saw how much there was: 

Then I had him line the containers up in order from least to greatest volume: 

He was surprised by order of a few of these. Just because they're taller doesn't mean they always hold more!

St. Patrick's Day Fun

Mar. 17, 2014

I'm not usually a big holiday person, but it's kind of fun to have a holiday theme to plan school around! I decided to put together a treasure hunt for Seth (to find a leprechaun's treasure, of course!).

Here's what I threw together that morning (yes, I plan REALLY far in advance):

(Note Seth found in his school drawer):

A leprechaun left his treasure somewhere here.

I can't tell you where, but it's very, very near.

To find where he hid it, a rainbow we must make.

We'll figure out the clues and then his treasure we will take!

You must solve a problem before you get a clue.

Here is problem #1, let's see how you do!

Problem #1: If you have 1 dime and three pennies, how much money do you have?
Clue #1: Mine is the color of a bright stoplight. I'm something Catherine takes a drink from every night. (Catherine's red waterbottle)

Problem #2: Count to 100 by 2s, 5s, and 10s.
Clue #2: There are five of us together, so yummy & so sweet. You'll find us near the mixer in the room where we eat. (5 orange Clementines)

Problem #3: Set a clock to 10:30 and 7:15
Clue #3: I'm squishy and foamy and float in the tub. I'm big enough to hold a baby Chub-a-lub.  (Aaron's yellow bath mat)

Problem #4: Find a sphere, cube & cylinder
Clue #4: Mom always brings me when she goes to the store. I hold her keys, wallet, phone & more. (My green purse)

Problem #5: What is 20+20?
Clue #5: Here is where you put your clothes at the end of the day. They always get so dirty when you jump & run & play. (Their blue laundry hamper)

Problem #6: What is 15-4?
Clue #6: Mom uses me to exercise because she wants to be strong. I live by the fireplace down where it's cold all day long. (Purple handweight)

Problem #7: Write '37' in tally marks.
Clue #7: Did you make a gorgeous rainbow, with six colors oh, so bright?
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple--that's right?
Because you made a rainbow, to the treasure you'll be led.
It's hidden in a treasure box under Catherine's bed!

The completed rainbow:

red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple (all items from around our house)

Enjoying the leprechaun's"treasure": green ring pops and gold (yellow M&Ms)

For fun, we also wrote our own St. Patrick's Day story. Seth dictated, I wrote, and then he illustrated. Who knew leprechauns had access to so many tanks, guns and explosives? I put it with our other St. Patrick's Day books so we can enjoy it for years to come: 

Measuring Weight

Mar. 10, 2014

After measuring length & height, we started learning about measuring weight. We used our bathroom scale for big items and our kitchen scale for small items.

Finding out how much the baby toy basket weighs

To help him visualize the differences in weight, I had him fill out this worksheet: 

We found a Han Solo toy that weighed one ounce, our Kindle weighed one pound, and the baby toy basket was a nice, even ten pounds. And guess what Seth finally found that weighed 20 pounds? 

See? Little sisters ARE good for something!

Tribulation Math Board Game

Feb. 28, 2014

Jon grew up playing this game and decided to find it for Seth (had to look on Ebay). We don't play by the rules yet, but we'll play by calling out a number and having Seth find two adjacent numbers that add to that number. I can see how it's going to be useful for lots of different math skills in the future!

Beginning Measuring

Feb. 25-Mar. 4, 2014

Our next unit was on measuring! We started off playing a fun game using non-standard units of measurement. I had one pile of things to be measured (rug, trampoline, shoe, etc.) and one pile of things to measure with (cars, popsicle sticks, pencils, etc.).  Seth would draw one from each pile and measure!

Measuring the rug with popsicle sticks

Measuring the trampoline with cars

From there we moved on to standard units of measurement. We first talked about measuring length in inches. I had Seth roll out playdough snakes and then told him how long to cut the pieces. He would have to measure using the ruler and cut each piece correctly: 

Next we talked about measuring length and height:

Our dino is four inches long...

...and about 6 inches high!

More measuring to come!

Skip Counting Finale

Feb. 3, 2014

For our last day of our skip-counting unit, I had Seth practice all the skip counting he had learned. We started off counting beads by 10s:

Then we counted marbles by fives:

And gems by twos: 

Then we recorded our findings: 

Next time I'll be smarter and cut down the numbers significantly. I let Seth decide how many beads/marbles to pull out, but it takes a LONG time for a little guy to count 231 beads, even by tens!

Counting by Twos

Jan. 27, 2014

We finished off our skip-counting unit by learning to count by twos. We spent a lot of time just chanting the numbers to learn the 'rhythm' of counting by twos. Once we got that down, we practiced counting all kinds of things by twos, like cars:

He didn't like counting by twos since it took so much longer than 5s or 10s, but it does tend to come quite in handy!

Counting By Fives

January 13-21, 2014

Counting by fives was a pretty easy step after learning to count by tens. First I gave Seth a bunch of popsicle sticks with each of the 5s between 5 and 100. He had to put them in order, then we said the numbers aloud:

Later, we dumped out all the glass gems and counted them in groups of five: 

I also started teaching him about tallying, since it's just counting by fives!

We used popsicle sticks as tally marks, making sure the fifth one sat diagonally on top of the four: 

He seem to catch on pretty quickly to the idea.

Now we just need to come up with more games using tally marks!

Counting By Tens

Jan. 6-7, 2014

This was Seth's first introduction to skip counting, so I tried to do a lot of hands-on activities to help him visualize things. 

First I had him fill ten cups with ten gems each. I asked him how many gems he had put in cups and he started counting them one by one:

I stopped him and reminded him that he knew each cup had ten gems, so he just had to count by tens. I had marked all the tens on his hundreds chart so he could see what numbers he needed to count by. He seemed to catch on quickly. 

Next I had him dump out all his glass gems and sort them into piles of tens: 

This one was trickier since he ended up with a pile of seven gems left over. So he had to count by tens, then add seven to his total.

And, to add a little movement, I had him set up a little "skip counting" activity using his foam blocks and notecards with multiples of tens written on them. 

Once he had the multiples of tens in order along the block path, I had him lay a list with all the numbers between the multiples on the ground between the blocks: 

Then I explained that these were the numbers he was "jumping over" when he counted by tens.

Note to self: write the numbers in reverse order next time!

And then he counted by tens and jumped: 

Not sure how much he really got out of this, but he's always a fan of jumping!

3D Shapes in Playdough

Dec. 10, 2013

A fun and simple way to help reinforce 3D shapes.

All I had to do was give Seth some playdough and access to pictures of 3D shapes (we have posters hanging on the wall above the table). Then I just sat next to him and helped him get the shapes right: 

It was a bit difficult for him to shape the playdough correctly, but I was there to help. It was a good way to help him physically feel the different shapes and how they were the same and different. 

Addition & Subtraction Games

Dec. 3-9, 2013

Just  few things we did to practice adding and subtracting (small numbers: 1-6). First was a simple dice game. I grabbed two standard dice (well, we used one Seth made himself--the yellow one pictured--but it was still a standard die) and made a third that had three addition signs and three subtraction signs on it.

Seth would roll all three dice and then figure out the answer. Simple and more fun than a worksheet!

(Only tricky part is subtraction--make sure you always subtract the smaller number from the bigger unless you feel like trying to explain negative numbers to your kindergartner). 

I also made sure he had some manipulatives to help when he got stuck on a problem:

Another fun game: Roll A Snowman!

I came up with a list of 11 attributes that could be drawn on a snowman (one for each the numbers that could be rolled with two dice: 2-12):

Seth would roll two dice, then add the numbers together. Whatever he rolled, he got to draw. Once he had rolled that number, I would erase it so we didn't end up with a three-headed snowman. He loved this game, although I did let him quit once we got down to one or two numbers left that didn't get rolled after several attempts. 

The final product:

Bead & Magnet Writing, and Math Games

November 14-21st, 2013

We tried this game called "Outside, Inside" for math, but it wasn't as big of a hit as I was hoping. Maybe next time I can make it more dramatic with a drop from a higher height. Either way, Seth got some practice with addition and writing equations. 

We also reviewed what we've learned about money and played another store game. This time instead of using amounts that directly corresponded to a coin (.01 for a penny), I used different amounts so Seth would have to add different coins together. He was confused at first but quickly caught on and even surprised me with his ability to break the amounts down into different coin amounts. 

We also had some fun doing some writing with magnets. Seth wrote this all by himself. It says, "I can go to gymnastics." 

This one says "The ball bounced."

(stupid sideways Blogger again)

"Gab lix to play with me"= "Gabe likes to play with me"

I love seeing Seth figure things out for himself!

Turkey Math

November 12th, 2013

I made this super easy number line to help Seth recognize what addition and subtraction looks like. He had a great time playing with it and mastered the concept quickly. I let him use the number line to do the problems I made for him in this turkey math game: 

Each turkey has a number written on it. Seth had to do the equations on the feathers and then match them to the correct turkey. He actually had a lot of fun doing this! 

Can't leave the toddler out, of course! Once Seth was done Catherine had her turn--she sorted the turkeys and feathers into piles by color (and did a most excellent job, too). 

Color Wheels, Air Pressure and 3D Shapes

November 7th, 2013

I decided to let Seth have a little more control over some of the things we did at school, and, of course, he picked some of the fun science experiments! First up was a color wheel using colored water and paper towels (blame Blogger for the crooked picture). We set it up and let it sit for a few hours to see what would happen: 

A few hours later the empty cups were full and we had some new colors on our wheel! Seth recorded the new colors and wrote down his favorite colors (pink and purple). 

We also did a fun experiment with air pressure. The kids LOVED watching the bottle spray water all over the place as the balloon deflated.  

We also started learning about 3D shapes. After introducing the shapes to Seth, we had a good time making some 3D shapes out of toothpicks and marshmallows. Then we went on a shape hunt around our house! This was a great way to reinforce that a circle is not a sphere and a square is not a cube (which is really confusing at first): 

This was a lot of fun, but it sure was hard to find anything pyramid-shaped in our house!