A new approach

I never realized how much math you can do through playing with leggo blocks! Math is an area I've been struggling with Kai and myself - just not knowing how to teach it and basically all I've done is have him do a few work book pages each day - which he always resists. So, I picked back up Ruth Beechick's book, "The Three R's" and read the Arithmetic section.

She talks about three modes of thinking - the Manipulative Mode (working problems with real objects), the Mental Image Mode (the child imagines objects in his head and works out problems using those images), and finally Abstraction Mode (children can think about an abstraction such as 'four' without having to picture 4 plates, 4 dots on a domino, etc.) She says on p. 88,

"They must become proficient in [manipulation mode] as a preparation for other modes to follow. This thinking - this actual experience with objects - is the foundation upon which all later arithmetic understandings are build. Thus, we must teach young children in the manipulation mode. Failure to do this is probably the greatest single cause of children's arithmetic difficulties. It is why people grow up with Arithmetic Anxiety."

Wow! So, I'm definitely realizing I need to spend some time working with real objects and real life situations. So on Tuesday for math we got out the blocks and sat on a blanket under a tree. There is so much math you can do with blocks! Kai counted to 100 several times on his own initiative.

Kai counting

Then we started seeing how many blocks he could fit onto certain blocks. It started getting complex - even into multiplication concepts - but Kai was going with it! Then we measured each other.

Measuring each other

Finally we sorted all the blocks into colors. All the kids helped with this and we talked the whole time about which pile was the biggest, smallest, etc. etc.

Sorting

Finally we build a castle with each color. Here's our end result (Kai took the pictures).

Color castles

Meanwhile, school has been on hold the last 3 days due to the weather - the weather is tooo beautiful! Plus the Costa Rican children are still on summer break, so all the neighbors are playing outside and I think it would be cruelty if I kept my kids in. So they are running, playing and enjoying the beautiful sunshine.