I am watching as the math wheels are beginning to spin in Selena’s little mind. She has been all about just numbers until she started digging into her math book. While we are reviewing numbers and grouping at this point, I hear phrases from Selena about plus 1 equals, saying her numbers in Spanish, and more complex thinking about numbers and how they are used in our daily lives.
The other day she was playing Yahtzee by herself while she waited for me to finish the dishes to join her. She rolled the dice, then would choose the number she was going to hold out. When I joined her, she just wanted to play the game her way, so I gladly allowed her, just to see how her little mind was truly seeing this game.
She rolled the dice, and holding out one dice at a time, she actually was trying to sequence them 1 to 5 or 2 to 6. She was getting really good at figuring out what numbers she needed to roll to fill in the gaps that she had in her sequence. Sometimes she would have a one and a six there, but by the next roll she realized she needed to trade in either the one or six to roll for a different number since she only had 5 dice. She was not sequencing these in order, sometimes she would start out with a 4, then maybe roll a 1, then maybe a six, she then would have to decide if she would roll 1 to 5 or 2 to 6. I know that if she would have taken more dice out then one at a time, this would have gone easier, but it was a great experience for her to stop, think, and figure it out by only taking one dice at a time. Yes, there were times when it didn’t work out, and she would just scoop up the dice and try again. Now unlike normal yahtzee she did roll five times.
I really feel even though we have done activities like this with her, to see her actually put it to a more practical use and the fact that she was doing it with out any prompts from me, was one more step towards her math fluency.
I wish I would have gotten some pictures of Selena having so much fun with her game she devised, but there are just those times that the camera just seems inappropriate and I really think it would have been more of a distraction to her.
My kids have had a recent jump forward too with their counting. And they've figured out how to start adding a little on their own. It's all very cool, so I know what you mean.
ReplyDeleteYay - go Selena! I know what you mean - I also really love to see Anna do unprompted math activities entirely on her own, and I like to see how Anna invents her own games with her own rules. I should try scrounge together our dice and try Yantzee out.
ReplyDeleteVery neat to see her taking steps forward on her own.
ReplyDeleteI love how you took a step back and just watched to see what she will do on her own. I know that I was all too eager to "teach" her concepts and while she seemed to retain them, it was short term. I try to remind myself to observe more. She's been adding one more in her head and adding doubles by herself. Something about doubles she loves. Math is more than simple counting though so basing it on real life seems to be more meaningful and seems to draw out the critical reasoning skills. It seems like Selena has that from all her varied experiences! And I love that she's doing it also in Spanish!
ReplyDeleteI've never played Yantzee but I may have to learn it one day!
ReplyDeleteThat's great how you let her play her own way. I used to play Yahtzee a lot with my grandma but its been years and years since we have.
ReplyDeleteIt is so fascinating to watch the development when they start making all of those connections isn't it!
ReplyDeleteYahtzee is a great idea! We love learning through board games (have done a few posts about it on our blog lately), but I hadn't thought about Yahtzee. I bet my son would love that. Thanks for the idea. :)
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