Advanced Math for Preschooler

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

I'm kind of stuck on where to go w/ DS (2.75) for math. I will be beginning Miquon Orange in spring & RightStart A next fall, but in the mean time I need ideas.

 

He has pretty solid number sense for numbers up to 20 (IDs & orders numerals, counts by rote & 1:1). Counts to 30-something but hasn't had the "aha" moment for repeating patterns that would get him to 100. He can continue ABAB, ABBA, ABC patterns. Knows basic 2D & 3D shapes. Mentally +/- 1 within 10 & can +/- other numbers within 10 using manipulatives. Subsitizes to 6+. Plays UNO, memory match, connect 4, & completes tangram puzzles. We have done some of MEP R, but he breezes through it.

 

He cannot do written equations or much mental math, so I don't think he's ready for Sum Swamp or other addition/subtraction games. His fine motor skills are age-appropriate; he can trace, but not much more.

 

Thoughts? Suggestions?

[mumto2]

I am trying to remember some of the things we did.....we had lots of jigsaw puzzles. I bought them wherever I could find ones with something interesting picture wise. Dot to dot books that progressively counted higher....some go really high were something both dc's loved. I had a set of books and manipulatives called funtastic frogs which had all sorts of activities that could be adjusted to what they wanted to do.....won't write numbers so glue three paper frogs for answer etc. Much happened through play and art. The Building Thinking Skills book was also good.

[Chris in VA]

Just a little thing--He might enjoy a clicker--one of those metal counters that displays the number of clicks when you press a button, like they use to count people when taking tickets. My niece turned us on to those; she would keep it in the car and count things when they ran errands or took trips (like stop signs, or white cars, for ex.). It helped with her upper numbers. She'd make comments like, "Only 3 more til I have 100!" that let us know she was really thinking mathematically.

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

Mum2 - He loves puzzles around 18mo-2, but has almost zero interest now. He prefers 3D activities like his take-apart race car. We have a dot-to-dot app on his iPad that goes up to 12 (he blew through), but I worry his fine motor skills aren't up to "real" ones freehand. 😕

 

Chris - He probably would like that! We could even just keep a verbal tally, or practice writing tally marks.

 

Heigh Ho - He enjoys pattern block activities but I have to keep them simple b/c he gets frustrated when they slide around. I forgot to mention we do incorporate measurement activities w/ unifix cubes & a bucket balance. I like your suggestion of music games! He is into his instruments lately. Dominoes I need to start playing w/ him... I may make some where he can match dots to words to numerals or something.

 

Thank you all for some fresh ideas!! I am also working on making a few board games... he is a game addict!!

[EndOfOrdinary]

We did a lot with "cashing in". Ds would assign a value to some type of toy: matchbox cars were worth 10, army men were worth 1, and crayons were worth 5. Then he would ask for a number. I would say three. He would show three army men. If I said thirteen he could do all sorts of things. After one round with a car and three army men I would say 'cash it in' and he would have to change it up to another version for thirteen. This would keep him very busy and allow me to do quite a bit of other stuff.

 

The numbers were kept low for the first two years, but quickly jumped up quite a bit higher. Assigning the value of two, three, and five allows for huge quanities of cashing in.

[mathmarm]

It sounds like you should continue to do what you are doing. At this point, I would do a lot of activities centered around skip-counting (fwd and bwd), place value and regrouping. Get some living math books and ditch the plans to start curriculum A in the spring and curriculum B in the fall.

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

EndofOrdinary - "Cashing In" totally sounds like something that could be made into a game!! We could use it to work on money. DS can identify penny/nickle/dime/quarter in US currency, but does not know value. Currently we are in a foreign country & local coin values are *totally* different, but may be easier to learn as they are all very distinct & clearly labeled w/ value.

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

Mathmarm - We do have several of the MathStart books, Anno's Counting, etc.

 

I don't plan to follow the curricula strictly, just offer the activities from time to time. Miquon will help introduce cuisinaire rods, as I have not used them before. RightStart has a huge variety of manipulatives & math games.

[bibiche]

Mortensen Math is so great for kids this age. I can't recommend it highly enough,

[Sarah0000]

Have you checked out education unboxed?

 

We breezed through Mep R right when DS turned three, and have done Miquon Orange, parts of Red, Singapore 1a and half of 1b textbooks only, and RS Activities for the Al Abacus, and lots of living math over the year from 3-4 years old. Its not necessary to be writing numbers, but it makes things a lot easier because he can play with the workbooks by himself. If he can trace, perhaps he could learn to freewrite numerals.

[Have kids -- will travel]

Calendars and time. My 2yo loves his own calendar, with day of the week, numbers, and month (blocks that you change every day). Clock with gears. Days of the week song and months of the year song.

 

100 square. YDS picks it up and just starts counting. He loves it. (it's the small things in our house)

 

Building. With anything.

 

Grouping. Addition starts with visually seeing 5 as 4 and 1, 3 and 2, etc. 

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

Bibiche - Haven't heard of it, but will check it out!

 

Sarah - I have not before, but it looks AWESOME! I'll definitely spend some time poking around there. I agree that writing the numerals will help, & that is probably something we will begin working on in the spring. Singapore 1a & 1b are also on order for spring, I had forgotten about those!

 

HaveKids - He knows time to the hour, but not the minute. We were covering days & months at the beginning of the school year, but I let it go by the wayside. I may add an interactive calendar / weather chart to our school space to bring that back & make it more exciting! He isn't much into building (prefers dramatic play), but I made a block addition / subtraction game that he will hopefully enjoy.

[mathmarm]

My son is only 2, but he has great small motor, so we have began teaching him Chisanbop, (finger abacus) and he is learning to count to 99 with his fingers, he also enjoys base-10 blocks and the Decimal Street Game that we play.

My son is very physical right now, we rely on games and activities to conduct "lessons " a lot of the toddler bags that I have around the house are math themed so we play math at random intervals throughout the day.

 

Base-10 Activities:

Chisanbop
Base-10 blocks

Money-exchange (pennies and dimes, $1 and $10)

 

Counting:

Blast-Off Chase: You count from a-b fwd or bwd and Jr. screams "Blast Off" and runs away, then you chase him. You can change the range to count by 1s, 2s, 5s, or 10s.

Num-Num Munch: You and DS both a fistful of counters you count your own counters and whoever has more counters,their counters "eat" the smaller amount.

So, if Jr. grabs 7 counters, and I grab 4, then 4 of his 7 "eat" my counter and then go take naps, so Jr. has 3 at the end of the round and I have 0. We never keep score, but I love that Jr. loves this game because he gets to count, compare, add/subtract. We usually play no more than 5 rounds, but we play a few times each week.

Number Line: We posted number lines on the walls in kitchen, bedroom and playroom as well as on the porch rail so that he can count from -10 to 10 whenever he wants. We have horizontal and vertical versions.

Dice Get the colorful kind and play a million ways.

Fraction blocks: We use the circular ones and so far, we just count and name them. 1 half, 2 halves, 3 halves, 4halves or 1 sixth, 2 sixths, 3 sixths, 4 sixths, 5 sixths, etc...

Counting-Catch: Play catch with something big and soft, as you throw the ball back and forth; you say 5, he says 6, you say 7, he says 8...You can go fwd or bwd or even skip count.

Cooking: We use the metric system at home when we measure. But we also count, measure, cut into fractions, etc...

 

 

Aside from having math injected throughout the day at random intervals, we also have a "Morning Meeting" that is essentially TOT School in general, but a few evenings each week we play "Math Club" that is essentially  a "Math Meeting", I borrowed the idea from Saxon Math Meetings, and was inspired by a few HSers blogs where they discussed how they do Math Meetings. During math club we have a special treat and we do counting, patterns, read a math story, show a number with tally marks, count that number on our fingers Chisanbop style, play with math blocks and "build" numbers, we do calendar, trace the digit of the day with a dry erase, sing math songs, and other activities. The 5yo and 2yo do Math Club together and they love it. We play a lot of dopey, home made games but those are almost the best part for them.

 

Example a dopey, home made game: I made large cards from cardboard with random 2-digit numbers on them, and when we draw one from the pile we read the number by powers of 10, show it with Chisanbop, build it with base-10 blocks in different ways. So 43 might be shown as 2ten, 23 ones, or 3tens and 13 ones.

 

Also, sometimes we draw 3-5 cards from the deck and play with them. We can order them, compare them etc...Math Club is new, but so far it is a huge hit.

 

 

 

 

[Guest Spesh]

These are lots of great ideas using great manipulates to get him playing with mathematical ideas.

Just to add a thought, I highly recommend the app QuickMath Jr, if you are looking for something to built his supplement his understandings across several areas of preschool math. This is the only paid app I have bought for 3 year old and I can't say enough good things about it. She loves it and one of the areas it has helped her grow in the most is extending patterns.

I wouldn't expect it to teach your child for you but it does gently expand some existing understandings and gives fun practice for a preschooler. (Ha, my 7yo loves it too, just saying...)

Good luck!

Sarah

 

 

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[Sarah0000]

I love your ideas Mathmarm!

 

I was starting to feel like we've gotten too far away from living math and doing too much curriculum for preschool. Now I'm feeling inspired again!

[Sarah0000]

I don't know what's typical, but I think it was a good foundation for DS to do simple math without manipulatives, after using them to show big concepts. So if its snack time you could ask "If I give you two cookies now before lunch and two cookies after lunch, how many would you have eaten all together?" Or "If you are a triceratops with three horns on your head and I'm a T Rex with zero horns on my head, how many do we have together?" That kind of thing will help him visualize quantities without manipulatives. But keep the total numbers within five at first.

[EKS]

I like RightStart for young kids.  If there is any writing to be done, I would scribe for him--for years, if necessary.  Also, if you don't have one already, a small or medium sized whiteboard is essential for teaching math to littles (and bigs, as I have discovered).

[Kerileanne99]

I have a dd5 whose love of math really blossomed about that age. We did a lot of the things mentioned above, finding fun ways to incorporate math into just about everything.

A couple of other things:

There is an awesome set of math games called GiggleMath. It is a set of 26 steps, all games, by which kids master addition/subtraction. For example, first level is adding 0, then +/- 1. Then they memorize doubles, then doubles+1. Then 'monkey in the middle' where they learn to recognize that adding numbers two digits apart is the same as the double of the 'monkey in the middle.'

They are all fun, simple games played with dice, cards, counters, etc., but my then 2 yr old LOVED them.

 

Math Baths- we filled a box with anything mathematical that could go in water. Measuring cups/spoons, foam numbers and symbols, thermometer, ruler, plastic measuring tape, fraction bars, any and all mathanipulatives, foam fraction symbols, these really cool plastic geometric solids you fill with water to explore volume, and so on. A balance, counting bears, we even put the Mintessori Pink Tower in to play with cubes. Then we just let her play, with us chiming in or mentioning conversions. Eventually she even had a laminated formula chart because she wanted to not have to ask us:)

She is five now and that is still one of her favorite things. They have gotten more elaborate, and we are always on the lookout for new math bath toys.

 

ETA:

We have a science bath too with slight spins if he is interested. So many cool things. I actually have a book called Bathtub Science. We just had a spooky Halloween bath where I dissolved B Complex vitamins in the bath and then turned on our UV light. Verrry eerie!