More math lore

Or math with Lore.

The Miquon math lessons are going so well that I keep wanting to get them down somewhere...not like I'm going to use them again (Crayons is our baby!), but it's nice to remember what worked and what didn't. Or maybe somebody else can use the ideas.

Yesterday we used the Trend object/numeral/written number cards again--I tell ya, those things can be really useful. The First Grade Diary suggested doing pages A-4 and A-5 in the first workbook--that is, writing the correct numeral beside groups of objects, and then drawing the right number of objects beside a numeral. I think Crayons did those sheets last year, and anyway I had the feeling that an assignment like "draw objects" would turn into an all-morning artistic masterpiece, so I decided to do the same thing with the cards. I sorted out the 56 cards into pairs--matching up the "8" card with the "eight" card and so on. Actually that would have been another good job for Crayons, but I was in a hurry--I'll let her do it next time. I took five of the pairs and laid half of them on the floor objects-up, the other half numeral-up. All she had to do was match the object card with the right numeral. Then I gave her five more cards to match objects-numerals; then five more to match objects-written number name; then finally five to match numeral-written number name. She had no problem with any of this, but it's nice to see for sure what she does know how to do.

Today we did several rod activities in a row. First Crayons built another set of colour stairs (all the rods arranged from shortest to longest). Then, following the activities given for "September 21," I asked her to put one each of the four shortest rods behind her back--that is, a 1 cm, a 2 cm, a 3 cm, and a 4 cm (white, red, light green, and purple). I asked her to pull out, by feel, various rods: the biggest, the smallest, the one that was half the size of the red rod, and a light green rod. Then I took a set as well, and we each added a 5 cm (yellow) rod to our handfuls, and Crayons asked me to pull out different colours of rods. I think this is a neat activity for involving sense of touch with math.

Still following the book, we "climbed the rod stairs" with a white rod, noticing that on each step up there's a gap the size of the white rod. (Meaning that the difference between each length of rod is 1 cm.)

Then I read from the book that Lore asked a girl named Lynn how many white rods make a yellow rod, and that Lynn said four. I asked Crayons if Lynn was right; she wasn't sure, so she measured a yellow rod with white rods--nope, it took five. I said, "If you count down from the top of the stairs, the yellow rod is the fifth rod down. So here's the bonus question: how many white rods do you think it takes to make a dark green rod? (the next rod down from the yellow?" "Six, of course."

Of course.

And that's another morning of math without a worksheet.