Teaching Math

It is the last week of December, and we only have a few days left of this year. We are really in this strange no one feels motivated to do anything slump. If it wasn't for our Mother Goose Time curriculum I don't think we would be doing much of anything this week. Again I cannot stress how much I really appreciate having everything laid out and ready for me each day. This has been easy for me to pull out and start using when I begin feeling guilty for not being schooly enough this week. And not only do I know we are going to enjoy the activities and projects, I also can rest easy knowing that we will be learning at the same time. Makes my heart happy and my anxiety a little less. We will be finishing up our last week of Winter Wonderland next week and then we will be starting the January Dinosaur Dig box. I think this is just the exciting change we will need to jump start us back into real life and help get us out of this post holiday fog. The kids are really excited for dinosaurs and I have some fun movies, field trips and extra activities planned to supplement this months theme.

For December the Mother Goose Time Blog Ambassadors focus topic is about Teaching Math, and let me tell you there is no shortage of fun ways to teach and reinforce math skills with this program. My son has made great improvements and has gained a lot of confidence in math this year with Mother Goose Time. There is opportunity to practice skills everyday and if you get the More Math workbooks that go along with the months theme there is even more opportunity to practice math skills.

I am going to tell you about what we did today to practice number concepts, adding, subtracting, and patterns. We started off the day with our morning meeting. We get together and eat our breakfast, read some great books, and do our calendar activities.

We get to start everyday with math. We put the new number up and I have my son tell me which piece it will be by looking at the pattern on the calendar. We also use our number tree to practice counting to the number of the month. This month the numbers are 7 and 8 so we've been practicing counting to 8 and we have also been practicing writing those numbers as well. He can now easily recognize numbers 1-8 with out having to count to figure it out.

After that we played the Foxes and Berries game from the Teacher Guide, this game worked on number concepts and self direction.

The object of the game was to roll the dice and count out the same amount of berries for your den. You kept going until the den was full. It was really cute and great number recognition and counting practice. My son was easily able to recognize the number on the dice and didn't have to count each individual dot to know which number he rolled. Then he was able to count out the same amount of berries and place them in his den. 

After we were finished with this we played with our snowflake builders and did a slightly different version of the Snowy Counting game that we did earlier in the week. 

When we first did this game we selected a card and said the number that was on it and then counted out the snowflake builders. This seemed very easy for him so this time I had him select a card, tell me the number, and count the snowflakes out just like the first time. But this time when he selected the next card I had him tell me how many he would need to add or take away from the snowflakes to match the new number. This was a fun way to practive adding and subtracting. I think since we had already done this activity and I didn't specifically tell him that I was making it into an adding and subtracting game he was excited to play and didn't seem frustrated by the extra challenge. He did very well with this.

After this we did a couple pages from the More Math Workbook. I really like using these pages as extra support with the skills we just practiced. I like the idea of learning through play and then applying it to the worksheets. If he gets frustrated I can tell him that it is just like the game we played and that usually helps.

Today we did a counting and pattern page from the book.

He loves doing his More Math workbook and will usually ask me to do more pages. I love that he is becoming confidant in math and isn't afraid to take risks and try new things. In the beginning of the year he complained a lot because it was hard and he didn't know how to do it and now just 3 months later he loves doing math and he counts everything he can. Mother Goose Time has been a blessing and a huge help not only with his education but his confidence as well and that is the most important thing at this age in my opinion. 

*Mother Goose Time has generously provided this curriculum to us in exchange for our stories and honest opinions*