Anyone else just put the math book aside for a while to play with all things mathy?

[FloridaLisa]

My 10-year-old ds is so math intuitive. It makes our math teaching time so wonderful as he gets it easily, can calculate in his head and I can even add on to the lesson for extra fun.  

 

My 7-year-old?  Math facts are not coming.  She has no intuitive sense of numbers and their patterns. So. I decided this week to just set the whole math book aside and play.  Right now, I don't have any game plan.  I know where she is in her understanding and where she needs to be. We're playing with money, fractions, 100 boards, cuisenaire rods, dominoes, base tens, the white board, card games.  

 

I want to enjoy math again. And I want her to enjoy it.  Right now, the sweet thing throws out these wild guesses and I can tell she has not at all absorbed the pattern of numbers.  

 

Anyone else done this successfully?  What did you use, what did you love? 

 

Lisa

[wapiti]

This thread might have some ideas for you http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/499692-looking-to-do-some-relaxed-math-here-want-to-share-ideas/

[Staceyshoe]

At one point, we set aside the books and played math games for about 3 months.  Well worth it!  I mostly used ideas from the Singapore HIG.  Education Unboxed has some wonderful ideas for using cuisenaire rods.

[Arcadia]

My boys don't fancy manipulatives. We just do grocery shopping and baking and my younger finally figure out ounces, pints, quarts and gallons. Metric system was easy for them but not the imperial system.

 

If nothing else, we have food to eat and they learn to bake.

 

We had time to time put away math books and just do real life maths. Sometimes we just do math puzzle books like sudoku. My kids need textbooks free days too.