Homeschool Math Blog

If you will allow... :)  This is my 8-year old daughter's website that she recently was able to put online: Children's Best Activities I especially like her "find-the-twins" printables - in other words, find the matching pairs (good for kindergarten/preschool). She made most of those herself, and some of them are tricky! (A few were taken from a clipart collection we own rights to--that's where she got the idea for them.) Of course I've had to help her, but really only with the framework (website). She's created the content.

Bon from Math is not a four-letter word made this little counting song, sung to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". Hope your little ones enjoy it!

Some of you might enjoy this article in New York Times: Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them It talks about a program called Building Blocks where preschoolers are taught simple math concepts, such as number symbols and counting. Kids that went through the program did much better in kindergarten math than those who did not. I had not realized that preschoolers are normally not taught much anything about numbers or counting. This program clearly proves how beneficial it is to do so, and how the kids' brains are definitely ready to learn counting at age 4 (and it can happen earlier, as well).

I've been doing math lessons with my 3-year old using the 100-bead abacus . Usually we do a few problems where she tells me a two-digit number to make, and I tell her a number to make, back and forth. Today she asked me to make 51, and I asked her to make 68. These went smoothly since she's getting pretty good at this now. Then we did a few "more than" problems. I said, "Let's say your sister has 5 cookies and you have one more than her . How many do you have?" This is a new concept to her, so we need to do it slowly and carefully with the abacus: first make her sister's cookies, then let her have the same amount, then give her one more. Then we did a few subtraction problems such as 7 − 4. She moved 7 beads, then "took away", or moved the other way, 4 beads. How many were left? 3 beads. I also showed her the subtraction 50 − 10 = 40. She started working on her own problem, "Let's do 9 − ..." and while she was thinki...

I just wanted to share a little "game" that helped my 3-year old preschooler to recognize her numbers. It's SO simple! Learn to recognize numbers - simple game Basically you just pick numbers, calling out their names, and taking turns.