Games from ThinkMath

Today, we played "games" from THINKMATH. I'm thinking this is probably "classical education" approved since one of the math programs recommended by "classical education" is Saxon math and this is supposedly better than Saxon math.

The 1st game is called "Grid Treasure Hunt" and is played on a 6 by 6 grid with one inch boxes. One person hide a "treasure" by planning where the "treasure" is. Start at the center of the grid on the center dot, the child draw a line from the center dots. The other person tells the child if he is warmer or colder depending if the child is getting closer to the treasure or away from the treasure. Child continues until he finds the location of treasure. Anyway, J had no problem with this one and enjoyed this one alot! We took turns playing.

The Second game is called "Shape Search" where I give an example of the shapes to J; sphere(ball), cylinder(can), rectangular prism (box) and cone (like ice cream cone). Then her job is to find in our house, objects that are sphere, cylinder, rectangular prism and cone. This game Prime also joined in. Wow, Prime was so good at this. He identified objects correctly before J and found many, many examples of each. ;-)

J for some reason was slower than PRIME and she looked hard, maybe too hard. Anyway, Prime was identifying the 4 objects left and right and all correct. Go PRIME!

These 2 games are a preview of what is to come in the next chapter of THINKMATH. J will learn in the next chapter "to give and follow directions on a map, to draw and recognize congruent figures, and to identify and compare 2 and 3 dimensional figures." I told you this math program moves fast but starts very simple and builds on top of the concepts covered.

At the same time, I have had J practice the basic math facts using the Enki verses as well the Enki movements. Maybe later, I will post an Enki math game. FYI- cuisenaire rods is used in both program as a manipulative.

J had great success using cuisenaire rod to help her with addition and subtraction problems from THINKMATH. One thing I remember from "A well-trained mind" by S.W Bauer and Jessie Wise is to let the child use manipulatives to help them between the ages of 5-7 and when they are 8-10 years, they switch into "mental image" mode. And to achieve symbolic thinking, the child will needs lots of manipulate in the younger elementary grades (1st and 2nd grade).