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Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Teaching Math

I stink at teaching math. I just stink at it.
ABC's? No problem!
Small motor skills? Easy as pie.
Handwriting? can do.
Religion? Just got our children's bible today!

But math? boring boring and more boring

I am in a rut. One month in and I am in a rut already. This is bad. I have not been able to come up with fun ideas to teach Madeline her numbers. And to make matters worse the methods I am attempting to use to teach her are just not working.
Examples?
I made a file folder game. No good.
We work with flash cards. Nope.
We do our calendar each day. Well, that method is helping a little since she loves to stick the numbers on the calendar with velcro. But the number sense isn't carrying over to other areas.

The only thing that really works is counting candy. Now I am all for this once in a while. But unfortunatly candy is not the only thing in life Madeline will need to count. If only life were that easy!

We count whenever we can in life. Shoes, clothes, dolls, food, books, pictures. You name it and we count it. I don't want it to seem like math is only 20 minutes a day. But I also don't want to count things 24/7.

Tonight I did some (much needed) research. I found a great Montessori based activity here that I am going to attempt to replicate this weekend. I also found some great picture books that can help with teaching math. When it comes to creating activities from picture books I have a great time. So hopefully tomorrow's store and library trip will inspire activities galore. I also found some great games here that I hope to create over the next few weeks.

Maybe if I have fun with math, then Madeline will have fun with math. I honestly shouldn't say all math is a problem. She does great with sorting and with sizes and shapes. It is counting and number recognition that is not going well. She can count one and two objects. But she cannot recognize the number one. And we have been working with the number one for 4 weeks. I am not trying to be pushy here, but a month on one number? Ouch!

Any suggestions? Reccomendations? Activities?

2 comments:

2Wired2Tired said...

Hope it is going better for you. I don't have any recommendations in regards to math as I was an English major! Fisher Price does have a really cute counting piggy bank. The coins are extra large for little hands and it sings cute songs counting songs when the money goes in. My kids are totally into money right now. They love to hold coins and stack them and count them. I don't even tell them they have different denominations, just different names right now. Maybe you could include some of that. Just a thought.

2Wired2Tired said...

Back again to let you know you have an award waiting for you on my blog. Congrats!