Dominoes are a fun math manipulative with multi purposes for multi ages. So, if you are like me and you teach more than one grade at home, it’s always nice to find something they can all do together. First you can simply play the game. That will be fun and provide your child practice with logical thinking, strategy, and number recognition. Put the dominoes in a bag and have your student grab one and use that to form his addition equation. For example the student draws one domino from the bag with a 5 on the top and a 3 … Continue reading →

Creative Commons immage by D3 Dan/ Flickr Spellers have the spelling be. Budding scientists have science fairs and competitions. Student Geographers have geography bees. What do you do with little mathematicians? Alot of homeschooled kids seem to excel in math, but beyond assigning them good grades,parents are often at a loss as to what to do with that talent. Well, you can enroll them in contests. Apparently, there are numerous math competitions each year, many of them on a national level. The continental mathematics league is for grades 2 – AP High school level where there are several meets a … Continue reading →

What is number sense and why would you want to build it? Number sense refers to the general understanding of numbers. Kids (or adults for that matter) who have good number sense see patterns and relationshps in numbers easily. Kids who struggle with math probably have poor number sense as well. Is your child stumped over understanding that 2+3 is the same as 3+2? Spending some time just working on building number sense might just help you! 1. Memorize those math facts. Gone are the days when you have to do flash cards or drill sheets to memorize math facts. … Continue reading →

I have written before about my son who is intuitively “smart” in all things math and science. He is the type of kid who frankly, doesn’t need to memorize his math facts. He just ‘gets it’ and the extra reinforcement isn’t necessary. However, my daughter needs the reinforcement of drilling through math facts in order to gain ‘number sense’. Unfortunately, I think it goes against every grain in my being to do rote drills. I don’t even like workbooks because I think they are too “rote”. Just because you want your kids to learn their math facts though, doesn’t mean … Continue reading →

Yesterday, my children (along with a buddy) did their very first lemonade stand. I realize that lemonade is just about to go out of season but really, we had been meaning to do it all summer and just never got to it. Everyone over the age of four was involved in the lemonade stand and really, it was a pretty big hit. We sold out all of our ingredients and at the very end had to turn people away. . .and we were only out there for about an hour. The experience though, got me thinking about what a great … Continue reading →