Saturday, September 18, 2010


 SMMART MATH: Lines and Numbers
Welcome to the September Teach/Learn Blogging Carnival.  The Teach/Learn Blogging Carnival is hosted by www.science-at-home.org.  Science @ home is for anyone because we are all teachers and learners all the time.  This month our theme is MATH, which isn't just about counting!  Our bloggers have written about games, materials, memory, shapes, graphs and more.  Check out the links at the bottom to find some other great posts on Math.

Can I say that I love the little preschool that my oldest attended and now my second is attending?  Two certified teachers who taught in school for years, now run a preschool to facilitate being with their own children as they grow up.  This is a little activity that they did in class: 

-Draw a squiggly line, a convex line, and a jagged line on a piece of paper.  At the end of each line, draw a circle. 

-Lay out dried beans, noodles, or cereal pieces on the table.  Ask your child to estimate how many noodles would fit onto the jagged line. 
 
-Then help your child run a line of glue down the jagged line.  Show your child how to line up the noodles along the jagged line of glue. 

-After he has glued on all the noodles that will fit onto the line, count each noodle out loud and see how close your child was to his estimation.

-In the circle, have your child write the number of noodles it takes to fill the jagged line.

Please take the time to visit the other participants and check out their posts on "Maths."
  • Marita at Stuff With Thing writes about meal time maths with the help of our dinner table centrepiece and other food related maths fun :)
  • AmandaB at HomeAge talks about numbers, shapes and sizes, who knew that nested building blocks could be so much more fun than just building them up and knocking them down!
  • For Cass at Schooling Choices the car is one of her favorite learning tools. She thinks you could teach a child almost everything they needed to know about Math without ever leaving the car.
  • Deb at Science@home let her kids raid the chocolate to measure and compare with scales and graphs.
  • Backyard Safari is a right-brained person who spent a lifetime struggling with math, but comes to see the light through the wonder of nature.
  • SMMART Ideas is another food learner, estimating with beans, noodles and cereal...and getting a little number writing practice in there too!
  • For Monique at Your Cheeky Monkey, learning to tell the time is an important part of learning for a child, and it incorporates areas of Maths such as number recognition, counting, sequences and general numeracy.
  • Narelle at A Bunch of Keys has a simple sorting activity that can be done with young children using things found around the home.
  • CatWay at Adventures With Kids is using play to explore 2D and 3D shapes.
  • Colin at Super Parents is writing about the discipline of maths, memory, and recall at 7 years old.
  • Deb Chitwood from Living Montessori Now loves all the Montessori math materials. But there’s one material she says is absolutely brilliant.
  • Miss Carly from Early Childhood Resources has a range of different mathematics activities that you can play with your children of all age groups!
  • Ash from Mm is for Me has been having some number fun for little learners!
Thanks for visiting our carnival, we hope you find some interesting new blogs.
          Lisa

9 comments:

Deb Chitwood said...

What a great, creative math activity! Hands-on activities are always best for young children, and that activity really stretches the child's ability to understand math concepts.

http://LivingMontessoriNow.com

PlanningQueen said...

Such a fun way to introduce basic mathematic concepts to your kids. Kids learn some much more when they are having fun and enjoying themselves.

amandab said...

What a great, simple activity! Will hav to give it a go once I get to the shops and buy some more pasta!

Anonymous said...

So simple and such a lovely introduction to mathematical concepts. Isn't it great to have a preschool that you love?

Marita said...

Simple, fun and creative I love it. Suspect my girls would also. Another school holiday idea to note down :) Thank you.

Deb said...

I love it. Estimation seems to be really hard - it's something that needs to be practiced to get good at it, something we often forget when kids are busy learning to count. This helps them get a sense of how big the numbers are.

Colin Wee said...

It might be cool, as a follow up, to cook with the ingredients. Maths could not be tastier!

Your Cheeky Monkey said...

Excellent excellent activity. I'm going to do this one on the weekend with my boys :-)

Loralee said...

Hey, thanks for checking in to www.candyexperiments.com. Glad to see you are still spreading good ideas for math and science.

I just got a sobering email from Larry Bock, organizer of the USA Science and Engineering Festival in which I'll be participating soon. He's very concerned that the number of American students obtaining degrees in science is falling compared to the rest of the world, and worries that soon we may not be scientifically competitive in the global marketplace. So good for you for pushing math and science--you're helping kids get a great start!

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails