absorption (and math game)

J's spent a long time (it's 3+ hours already and she is still going at it) totally absorbed and happy with this activity: cutting out the doll template and the clothes and designing the color of the wardrobe.






While W spent time happily playing with the beans, and playing math game with me.

Stirring; he calls it "frying the beans"

Letting it run through his fingers

He insisted on putting in between his toes (he did wash his feet good before doing this)

You can make up your own games with the beans but the first good exercise for W was writing the numbers on these beans. Then we scooped a bunch of them out (W always manage to scoop more beans than me) and see who got the biggest sum. We started with a little spoon, then switched to a bigger spoon so we can scoop out more beans.

It was soon apparent to me that it would be easier to try to make them into "10"s and we checked to see how many "10"s we can make. Then it was expanded so that we can trade our given number for different beans but it has to equal to the original number. For example, if I have a 7 and 6, then I can trade the 6 for 3 and 3 so that one of the 3s can paired up with 7 to make a 10.

Now, W can easily figure out the sum to his beans. I can see the "trading" of the beans took a little more thinking for W. But W really liked this game and after I was done, he even played this game by himself.