Little Hen tends to rotate through phases where she really enjoys worksheets (which I can respect, although I don’t understand it!). Her auntie has stocked her with books and books full of math worksheets, and I generally pull out a stack of the ones that match the topic we are currently studying, so they are available to her.
Right now, we’re working on the concept of place value and adding two and three digit numbers. Daddy brought some wooden Base Ten Blocks that he wasn’t using at work (he’s a math and history teacher), and they have been a wonderful tool in helping both of the girls develop an understanding ones, tens, and hundreds.
What math tools have you found meaningful and useful as your kids explore math?
We’re still trying to figure out what homeschool math will look like for us. The worksheets aren’t working. We got an abacus that gabriel likes to use to help solve addition and subtraction problems. We have some Cuisenaire rods that I checked out from the library that we are going to experiment with. I found some “wheels” on a Montessori website that are supposed to be used to memorize addition/subtraction facts, but it remains to be seen if the kids will use them. I found a couple of websites that tell how to use Lego to teach math, and I think we will go in that direction for now. I also found some websites that teach dice and card games to learn basic math facts. We will be trying those, too. Games work well for my son.
Other homeschool topics are easier to work on for us, but math seems to cause resistance in my son. I’ll try to let you know how things go in the next few weeks.