Ugh. Want to help me choose yet another math strand?

[Kerileanne99]

So as many of you know from some of my posts, I have a math- loving, very accelerated dd4. We have so many math strands going it is ridiculous. And that really doesn't count the random rabbit trails based off of the living math books, Penrose the Cat books, puzzles, Bedtime Math tangents, or just things that catch her attention. I am always balancing her math topics and projects, but it has become almost a game to see how we can work them into our other 'school.' For example, the other day she wrote her Spanish vocabulary words on triangles and built fractals:)

Her newest area of interest in fractions, decimals, and percents. She has been fairly interested in simple relationships of such for a few months. She checks the weather on my phone daily and will get me to play the 'weather game' with her. She knows that say, 20% chance of rain means 20 chances per 100 (thanks to Life of Fred!) and we then write out what this means in fraction form and decimal form. I got a great flip chart that has a pictorial of the relationships for many of the major relationships so maybe this spurred her interest.

I am looking for an fun, light-hearted way to let her continue to explore. We are working through Singapore 3A now, have done both RSA and B, but honestly this is more for me than her. She does ALL the problems because she enjoys it. She already is confident in multiplication (including say 4 digit by 3 digit), basic division, and glommed onto long division the other day when she wanted to know how to divide numbers that 'weren't perfect.' She loves word problems and mental math (she is also learning Japanese Soroban-abacus training). We are doing Life of Fred Edgewood at the moment, and use Beast Academy as well although she does not have the stamina to deal with the frustration yet:) We have also had tangents where we did geometry or Hands on Equations. She can do things like calculate area/perimeter of quadrilaterals, triangles, and circles because we spent a week building animal pens for hungry toys. She can use the Pythagorean Thereom because of the coolest book for 'babies' that showed her how to do it with alphabet blocks. She knows her first 20 squares, cubes, and square roots after we spent 2 weeks building with sugar cubes. Lots and lots and lots of little mini units and tangents like that.

And I am not worried about perfect mastery of these things as long as she wants the exposure, has fun, feeds her love of math...and it calms her down to have those needs met.

So after that background, if you have slogged through it and taken it in the spirit it is intended, I am hoping for some help from parents who have been through it and can advise! Here are some questions:

1) Fractions/Decimals/Percents- since this is her newest interest, what would be the lightest intro of a 'for fun' nature? My first thought was to just order Life of Fred Fractions and see how it goes. The description and PDF preview seems reasonable, especially since I am not concerned with mastery at the moment. But for those of you that have been through them, will this be jumping the gun? Is there a reason I should hold off and maintain the story? The more LoF we do the more I am thrilled with the unique threads interwoven into the program and I would have to circumvent that. I would imagine that given her age we will also do the intermediate books for fun as well.
So if not LoF for this, then what? I have heard great things about the Key to... Books but will they be something we can do for fun? Same with the Math Mammoth Fractions book? She spends more than enough time (at least I think so!) at the table doing 'school' so I am hoping for something a bit less schoolish:)
Any other recommendations or even just ideas for activities?

2) I think we are going to be pursuing lots of little math rabbit trails for awhile, as I am just not sure she will be ready for the intensity/frustration of problems whose solution takes more than a few minutes! We are working on it by ensuring she gets at least one 'stumper' per day. One question that takes longer and longer each time, that I know she will not get right away. This is our variation of 'patience stretching' to get her to a point where she can go deeper, but also so that she doesn't get the idea that math must come easy. We also read biographies about mathematicians and scientists to reinforce this, but I would love some more ideas on how to help a child of this age learn that mathematics will require her to be tenacious. We have been trying to set up BA 'labs' with hands on materials that stay out and we work on it for a bit, go play, maybe come back later. Any ideas or insights?

3) finally, I need ideas for other rabbit trails! Hubby and I are scientists, but I certainly do not consider myself a super 'mathy' person. I did a fairly straight-forward math path through school so I am learning right along side of dd for many of the extras. Of course, Penrose books have lots of ideas for fun things like math in other bases, but what else can I consider? Resources?

Whew! Long post...really, thanks for any thoughts, advice, or perspective you can offer:)

[quark]

1) Fractions/Decimals/Percents- since this is her newest interest, what would be the lightest intro of a 'for fun' nature? My first thought was to just order Life of Fred Fractions and see how it goes. The description and PDF preview seems reasonable, especially since I am not concerned with mastery at the moment. But for those of you that have been through them, will this be jumping the gun? Is there a reason I should hold off and maintain the story? The more LoF we do the more I am thrilled with the unique threads interwoven into the program and I would have to circumvent that. I would imagine that given her age we will also do the intermediate books for fun as well.
So if not LoF for this, then what? I have heard great things about the Key to... Books but will they be something we can do for fun? Same with the Math Mammoth Fractions book? She spends more than enough time (at least I think so!) at the table doing 'school' so I am hoping for something a bit less schoolish:)
Any other recommendations or even just ideas for activities?

2) I think we are going to be pursuing lots of little math rabbit trails for awhile, as I am just not sure she will be ready for the intensity/frustration of problems whose solution takes more than a few minutes! We are working on it by ensuring she gets at least one 'stumper' per day. One question that takes longer and longer each time, that I know she will not get right away. This is our variation of 'patience stretching' to get her to a point where she can go deeper, but also so that she doesn't get the idea that math must come easy. We also read biographies about mathematicians and scientists to reinforce this, but I would love some more ideas on how to help a child of this age learn that mathematics will require her to be tenacious. We have been trying to set up BA 'labs' with hands on materials that stay out and we work on it for a bit, go play, maybe come back later. Any ideas or insights?

3) finally, I need ideas for other rabbit trails! Hubby and I are scientists, but I certainly do not consider myself a super 'mathy' person. I did a fairly straight-forward math path through school so I am learning right along side of dd for many of the extras. Of course, Penrose books have lots of ideas for fun things like math in other bases, but what else can I consider? Resources?

 

1) She can always read/ you can read aloud LOF Fractions, keeping the your turn to play for later. Key To is very, very gentle. You can do as much or as little as you want to but my only hesitation would be that it's very simple, black and white. If she's a 4yo who loves color and cute, she might find it boring. But then again, she doesn't sound like most 4yos. :laugh:  I'm guessing you guys have already tried using real life math like baking together etc for fractions/ measurements.

 

2) Really, please don't worry about intensity/ frustration now. I'm not asking you to slow her down because I know that's next to impossible for a math hungry kid. I'm asking to not worry about "patience stretching" and being tenacious etc at this age. Just let her at it. Have fun. You are on to a good thing here...getting too much in the way in the name of making her persistent etc might backfire on you. It's like you are giving her the message that there has to be something more all the time or that it needs to be harder for her. She thinks it's easy and fun and that's really good for now. If she wants to accelerate herself just go with it. Please trust me that there is time for adding/ encouraging hard work and persistence. Actually, if you think about it, she really is already working hard! :001_smile:  Normally, parents start ramping up at about 9, maybe 10 right? We started at about 8 because that really was the right time for him. Prior to that, we focused most urgently on fun and keeping that love of math alive. For her, it might be between 6 and 8yo just because of how hungry she sounds but even then, that's a very early start, even for a PG child.

 

3) Some ideas...

• Have you already seen the Family Math books?
• If you are reading living math books aren't there suggestions or jumping off points you could use from there? E.g. Malba Tahan's The Man Who Counted, The Number Devil etc can lead to many explorations.
• My siggy might have suggestions. Is she ready for some of Martin Gardner's easier puzzles? Google for beginner level/ elementary level math circle problems?
• Have you seen Arvind Gupta's materials (free)? E.g. math club activities, math art, and more here (click on English and scroll down for books on mathematics)
• Does she like making lists? Could she "collect" number patterns and maybe you can help her write them down? E.g. kiddo liked noticing triangle numbers, primes etc and drawing mazes with graph paper notebooks. She can decorate these notebooks and just add to them over the years. I find these to be excellent keepsakes (I love looking through kiddo's notebooks every year or so)

I'll add to the list if I think of anything else.

 

ETA: do consider circling back to some of the activities you do now at a later date. I've found with kiddo at least that although he doesn't like repetition, his improving executive function skills usually help him gain something else/ more from old activities.

[Kerileanne99]

1) She can always read/ you can read aloud LOF Fractions, keeping the your turn to play for later. Key To is very, very gentle. You can do as much or as little as you want to but my only hesitation would be that it's very simple, black and white. If she's a 4yo who loves color and cute, she might find it boring. But then again, she doesn't sound like most 4yos. :laugh: I'm guessing you guys have already tried using real life math like baking together etc for fractions/ measurements.

2) Really, please don't worry about intensity/ frustration now. I'm not asking you to slow her down because I know that's next to impossible for a math hungry kid. I'm asking to not worry about "patience stretching" and being tenacious etc at this age. Just let her at it. Have fun. You are on to a good thing here...getting too much in the way in the name of making her persistent etc might backfire on you. It's like you are giving her the message that there has to be something more all the time or that it needs to be harder for her. She thinks it's easy and fun and that's really good for now. If she wants to accelerate herself just go with it. Please trust me that there is time for adding/ encouraging hard work and persistence. Actually, if you think about it, she really is already working hard! :001_smile: Normally, parents start ramping up at about 9, maybe 10 right? We started at about 8 because that really was the right time for him. Prior to that, we focused most urgently on fun and keeping that love of math alive. For her, it might be between 6 and 8yo just because of how hungry she sounds but even then, that's a very early start, even for a PG child.

3) Some ideas...

• Have you already seen the Family Math books?
• If you are reading living math books aren't there suggestions or jumping off points you could use from there? E.g. Malba Tahan's The Man Who Counted, The Number Devil etc can lead to many explorations.
• My siggy might have suggestions. Is she ready for some of Martin Gardner's easier puzzles? Google for beginner level/ elementary level math circle problems?
• Have you seen Arvind Gupta's materials (free)? E.g. math club activities, math art, and more here (click on English and scroll down for books on mathematics)
• Does she like making lists? Could she "collect" number patterns and maybe you can help her write them down? E.g. kiddo liked noticing triangle numbers, primes etc and drawing mazes with graph paper notebooks. She can decorate these notebooks and just add to them over the years. I find these to be excellent keepsakes (I love looking through kiddo's notebooks every year or so)

I'll add to the list if I think of anything else.

ETA: do consider circling back to some of the activities you do now at a later date. I've found with kiddo at least that although he doesn't like repetition, his improving executive function skills usually help him gain something else/ more from old activities.

Quark, thanks for the feedback!
I really will have to think about my approach with 'patience stretching.' My goal has always been to make sure she is having fun, but to give her a challenge. Her self-proclaimed nickname is Charlie Chicken?! And she invented a game we play she calls 'no trickin' my chicken' where I give her increasingly more difficult problems until she says enough! You tricked the chicken:)
But maybe this is enough for now. There IS plenty of time later to go deeper.

I like the idea of LoF fractions, decimals, and percents for now, and she can maybe just take them to bed with her for now as her bedtime reading. She tends to read and reread the Fred books after we have done them together, so hopefully that will feed the need. Yes, we play a lot with fractions and percents in the kitchen, but maybe I can get more creative. For some strange reason she is really interested in nutritional labeling and %DA so maybe I could do something with that.

We do have all the Kitchen Table Math books and have used them extensively. I haven't gotten them out in the last 4-5 months, so maybe I will have another look for ideas. Thanks for the reminder. Most of our homegrown math ideas were spawned from ideas in the books. I feel like they didn't just tell me how or what to teach, but rather taught me to come up with fun homegrown math ideas of my own. Those and a book called Marshmallow Math when she was younger were the impetus for a math world in our house. We have a weekly 'math bath' that was one of my first inspirations from KTM. Any and all waterproof math manipulatives you can imagine are in a massive tub: measuring cups/spoons, fraction circles, unifex cubes, a Montessori Pink Tower, rulers, c-rods, a clock, coins, etc...even dry erase markers for the tub surround.
I would say at least 50% of our math program is based upon board games as well, but maybe I should have a look for some involving fractions, decimals, and percents. Anyone have any suggestions?

I think she will LOVE the idea of a math notebook. She really like patterns and will often bring me out a sheet of printer paper with some pattern she noticed done in marker. It would be awesome to be able to keep them and look back. The time is going by too quickly. She Is fascinated in particular by Fibonacci numbers after a living book or two on the topic and likes to see how many she can write down. Recently though we went on Spring Break. The drive was long and I bought her one of those little clicker counters. She chose to count red cars she saw on the trip and I was actually quite shocked at how she played with the numbers. Simple things like, only 12 more and that will be 50, that's halfway to a hundred...but then things like now I have 343. That is 7^3 mom! How many do I need to get to 8^3?! She would either figure it out or ask for help, and on she would go. BEST.$6.EVER! I would love to have all of her little thought processes in a book for her. Great idea!

I always forget about art. She really enjoys art, and your post made me remember that her favorite part of Donald in Mathmagic Land video had to do with math in art. There must be resources out there based upon that, so I shall have to do some research:)

Thanks again. Her math/numbers addiction can be a little daunting at times. Today I had to have my mom phone whilst I was trying to fold laundry because I just could not take anymore hunting for lines of symmetry in the pile of clothes to be folded! Unfortunately her folding skills are not quite as great as her eye for symmetry. The last time she insisted on doing ALL her laundry that way...it took over an hour and she looked like she was hit by a wrinkle bomb for the next week:)
I know, I know. I should be thrilled that she wants to fold her own laundry, but....

[Julie of KY]

Have you looked at Kitchen Table Math? It is a 3 volume series that teaches serious math though activities and play.

[Crimson Wife]

Beast Academy has fractions in one of the books (3D?) so you might want to consider letting her skip ahead to that chapter.

We have a set of Rainbow Fractions tiles that all my kids love: http://www.learningresources.com/product/rainbow+fraction--174-+tiles.do

[Ravin]

Khan Academy.

[quark]

Glad it helped.

 

Thinking about this some more, I forgot to add that the nrich site might be helpful as well. The problems there start young and go up to a high level.

and of course, MEP (if you are not using it yet).

 

For fractions, we found paper to be very helpful. Just folding paper into various fractions then correlating the fractional parts to decimals at a later stage. Decimals took him a little while to wrap his head around due to place value but once he got it, it just stuck and he didn't need much repetition. Google paper folding fractions and I'm sure you'll get some hits/ ideas. Don't worry about budding fine motor skills if she can't make creases yet. You can fold with her and she will figure it out eventually.

 

Another thought. You surround her with math books and materials but what about trying to see if she can hold math thoughts in her head for longer periods of time? Manipulate numbers mentally? Kiddo loved giving us codes that he made up in his head. I know people freak out when their kids do math mentally and refuse to write it down but it looks like you are in the ideal stage to encourage both skills. Kiddo finds his mental manipulation skills helpful all the time and it's something we continued to encourage, alongside writing math down (writing down actively only after he turned 8 though). 

 

Talk math too. Try to keep doing that. Looking back at all the things we've done, I think it's the conversations that he remembers best and learned most from. And to talk math, it really helps to be able to hold it in your head. Something I find hard lol but it's easier for them when they are so young.

[Korrale]

I need to flip ahead a bit to check but I think c-rods would be a fun way to go. I have the cards from a program called Modern Mathematics Made Meaningful. James likes to go through the cards, read the instructions and do them with the rods.
It had been a while since with watched Mafhtacular but does Justin have any good segments on fractions/decimals/percents?

So funny about the weather thing. James has to check my app everyday too.