Thursday, August 11, 2011

Meet Sam and Jan/Math Buddies

What do these two little ginger men have to do with math? Well, let me have the chance to tell you. (I want to say thank you to Ticia at Adventures in Mommydum  for her helpful advice and the inspiration I have received from Phyllis at All Things Beautiful because with them I don’t know if I would have come up with this activity on my own.)

100_5136 100_5137

Meet Sam and Jan. Sam is the one wearing green and Jan is wearing blue. I asked Selena to find these little characters before she went to bed Monday night. I told her we were going to use them for math. Come Tuesday morning she was more then excited to start her math lessons, especially when math included not only her two toys, but her breakfast.

With a bowl of Cheerios, chalkboard, chalk, and paper we set out to write our own simple word problems to help Selena understand the concept of simple addition.

We first started with 0 + 0 = ? and worked our way up to the variations of 1 + 1 = ?

100_5138

For each problem Selena helped me tell the story of her two little people. I wrote it out on the chalk board. Then using paper we wrote the problems out together. Then Selena had to solve the problem.

100_5139

The best part was Selena’s reward for doing such a great job! Before you get to see that picture, we will be using these two little fellows more often in our math.

100_5141

I still for the life of me can’t figure out why Selena thinks it is necessary to slowly push all our work back allowing more and more room for her to just climb up on my table and sit. I think it is time I get this area organized and we start doing school here.

100_5142

I have truly been waiting to share this wonderful feature with you since I still have so much more work to do in this area of the  house, but look below our bookcase, Selena has her own pull out desk. There is more.

100_5143

Underneath the pull out desk is a drawer just perfect to keep all her school supplies in. This is not only my favorite areas but Selena thinks it is pretty cool too. Now you can all help me by reminding me weekly or daily to get in and get this area organized. It sort of ended up being the place where all the little odd and end stuff ended up getting placed, so now it is where to put it, or find another bin and pack it up.

For those of you looking for my Geography/History Meme, after much consideration, and in order to just keep the flow going in our homeschool, I am going to be discontinuing this Meme. If someone wants to take it over feel free to move forward with the idea.

Pin It

4 comments:

  1. I'll pray about it, or maybe Phyllis will, hint, hint.......


    I'm about to spend the day, cleaning organizing, and being super duper busy as the kids are at "Take Your Kids to Work Day." So maybe we can both do a little organizing as well.

    So glad to hear the story math worked!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would love to take over the meme! I think using Sam and Jan are a great idea. I love the word problems. Wonderful!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love your new math friends :). I cant wait to see what you do with Selena's new desk space. What a great feature in your home!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I am a little sad that you are giving up history/geography meme, but I am glad Phyllis already stepped in. I like the idea of using dolls for word problems. It's interesting that Anna has absolutely no problems solving word problems in her head, but gets agitated when she sees the same problem written as a math sentence.
    Now - go and get organized :)

    ReplyDelete