Many of you probably read this, but this was really fun for my daughter so I thought I will put it up if any of you like to try.
This is from Learning all the Time by John Holt.
A: Think of a number. Don't tell me what it is, but be sure to remember it."
B: got it.
A: Make sure you don't forget it.
B: Okay.
A: Now add 3 to it -- and don't tell me the answer.
B: Got it.
A: Now add 10 to it.
B: Okay.
A: Now take away 7 from it.
B: Okay.
A: Now add 5 to it.
B: okay.
A: Now take away the number you started with.
B: okay.
A: The answer is eleven!
Later, J made her own little math problem and was just amazed the answer always worked out except one time where she started with 90 and had math errors. J also tried this game on Prime, and she said, Prime says, "My answer is 11 too!". :)
We did this for her copy work as well. I changed our routine a little bit and I think it worked better. Previously, I would let her choose what she wanted to copy and she picked few sentences to copy but she did the work by herself. But today, I put up a piece of paper on my wall with scotch tape and wrote it on the paper to demonstrate. (WOW, do I feel like a teacher now!) I wrote one sentence at a time and J copied. This is a lot more hands on but I can tell J liked it better. She is people person and enjoyed the interaction. I also wanted to make sure she had no problem copying from a black board as I read some children have that problem. Luckily, J did fine.
I also did few minutes of beads work with Prime. I was surprised that he can tell by the bead, any number 10 and below really fast, like 9 for example. But if I give him a row of 10 and a row of 9, he would say that's 10 and then he would count the 9 beads one by one. And it didn't matter if I give him 1 row of 10 with another 3 or 5 beads, or pretty much any beads, he would start counting the beads which did not add up to 10. If however, I gave him 2 rows of 10, he would say 20 w/o counting. It was an interesting observation for me. I'm sure daddy can write more about this as daddy is the one who works with Prime on the math and says he loves to do math and always asks for more and that in turn gets J going on too.
9 comments:
I need to get that book! I actually haven't read any of his books before, am familiar with him, but need to read more. What a cool activity, thanks for sharing.
BTW, I sent off the pendant today. Sorry it took a week to get it sent off. I think I'm just a little nervous about people really seeing my felties. ;)
That sounds like great fun!
Thanks for visiting my blog. We are a homeschool family too. We've been at it for 12 years now and it's mostly been fun, always very worth it.
I really enjoyed this post! I need to find that book. :)
Fun math problem, I tried it out with 4 different numbers. :)
what a great post! my girls are too little yet but i'm gonna check out that book for later :)
HI Lisa
Not a problem. Thank you for your generosity!! I'm excited to see it. :)
Cool math problem! I'm going to try it with my daughter today.
That's a cool one! I was watching this documentary about a great elementary school teacher one time, and he'd do these mental math problems with the kids in which he'd say something like, "Okay, start with the number of minutes in an hour. Now subtract the number of Supreme Court Justices. Multiply by the number of colors in a rainbow," etc., for MINUTES at a time, and then the kids would all have the answer!
I'd have to plan it out and get the answer in my own head first.
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