Math

By Amy

For math we're using Horizons curriculum. Personally, I'm a big fan of the "spiral approach." [That means that there's continual practice of previously taught concepts.] I like the pace of Horizons. They don't spend so much time on a concept that my kids are bored, but they review often enough that they don't forget how to do things, either. Since one lesson (front and back of one page) usually will cover 5 different concepts, there's not enough space to have 87 addition problems! Although if there's a concept that my kids have definitely mastered, I have no problem skipping that section, or only having them do the odds or evens. The curriculum also comes with worksheets that I can use to supplement the workbook if I feel like my kid needs extra practice.

When I prepare for school each week, I look at each math lesson to see what new concepts will be introduced and to take away any problems I don't think are necessary. (I don't like busy work!) Each day, I usually walk my boys through their lessons together, but Savannah can often do her lesson completely on her own. I'd say I usually end up teaching her math once or twice a week. Even though I really like math, I'm thankful that it's not something that takes me half an hour to teach each day.

But, the best part of math is our Math Fun Day on Fridays. Sometimes I have all the kids together, and sometimes I do things with them to specifically apply what was in their lesson that week. For example, the boys were just introduced to tally marks. So, I gave Alex a pile of tiles in two colors. He randomly put them in a straight line. Peter stood at the white board and and made tally marks as Alex called out the color of tiles. ("Red, Blue, Blue, Red, Blue....") Next, Alex counted how many of each color tiles he had in front of him, and Peter counted his tally marks to make sure they matched. Then, they switched places. After that, I gave them Popsicle sticks and had them sit back-to-back on the floor with their trays. I called out a number and they had to make that many tally marks with their Popsicle sticks.

While the boys were playing with Popsicle sticks, Savannah was making a graph. We have a map of the US on the wall. Each state is one of five different colors. Savannah made a bar graph of the colors represented on the map. Then, she had to count how many she had in each color and add them together to make sure she had accounted for all 50 states. She did a great job! And, the following week, when my boys were introduced to graphs, I pulled out the graph Savannah had made to teach them how to read a bar graph.

I'm not creative enough to come up with fun math activities each week. So, I have some help. Two of my favorite resources are Scholastic's Shoe Box Math book and Primary (K-2) Idea Book for Cuisenaire Rods.

The Shoe Box book has fun little math games that my kids can play together or with me. And, it uses a lot of common items (buttons, dominoes, etc.). It also provides game boards or score sheets to photocopy. The ideas in there are simple, but fun! With my boys I can use dominoes to work on adding. With Savannah I can use a 10-sided-dice and 100 board. We have a race: Starting at 100 we take turns rolling the dice and subtracting what we roll to see who can get down to 0 first. Or, we can start at 0 and race up to 100! This book offers 40 different ideas. I definitely haven't used all of them (or even read all of them yet), but I haven't found one that I wouldn't or couldn't do.

I love Cuisenaire Rods. I think they can be used to help kids really understand and see math concepts. (Base 10 blocks are great too!) All three of my kids love playing with c-rods. For example, I can make a "train" of 3 rods (white (1), blue (9), and yellow (5)) Then I can ask my kids to come up with another train that is just as long, but doesn't use a white, blue or yellow rod. The Idea Book has lots of great ways to use c-rods to reinforce concepts like: addition, subtraction, number awareness, symmetry, graphs, greater than/less than, fractions, and much more!

There are lots of really great math curriculums out there! I've heard good things about Right Start and Math-U-See. Both are manipulative based and more teacher driven, and from what I understand, they're really great. Also, Singapore math has come highly recommend to me as well. So, I'm definitely not convinced that Horizons is the best thing available, but it has been great for my family. In my opinion, if it's not broken, don't fix it!