The Pinay Homeschooler

Dynamic Addition

Monday, November 17, 2014

Our dynamic addition starts with a brief discussion of what makes a 10 using a unit (1’s), 100 using 10’s and a 1000 using 100’s. This is a visual presentation of smaller units that we can group together to form a bigger units. From here, I told Mavi that whenever he encounters this when he plays Stamp Game, all he needed to do was to “substitute” the group with a bigger value.

The concept of dynamic addition in Montessori is the same whether you use golden beads, stamp game or bead frame. Here’s how we do it:

[Top left photo] Mavi would take out a strip of paper with a written equation and copies it in our booklet. [Top left photo]
[Top right photo] He would layout all the stamps according to the equation. Then perform the addition by combining the two sets. See our Static Addition for this.
[Lower left photo] Count the stamps starting from the unit’s place value. He counted 13 units, grouped the 10 units (green) and replaced it with a 10 (blue). As you can see, he was confused at first he put the 10 (blue) in the units area. This I emphasized that he has to place it on the correct area in the place value mat.
[Top right photo] He recorded the sum after he worked on the tens and hundreds, applying the same concept of regrouping.

Note: Mavi has memorized a lot of number pair in addition. Most of the time he doesn’t use the stamps or beads, he automatically do the addition work. Sometimes he would start on the thousands going down to the units. I have to explain that he always need to start from the smallest unit. This is because he will produce an incorrect sum once the equation is dynamic. That is the number changes (addends) because of the regrouping. And he understood this somehow when finished a few equation strips.

Well, that’s all for dynamic addition for now. This is just an introductory to my 6 years old. We’ll practice more of this next year.

FREE Skip Counting Learning Materials

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Here’s our homemade math learning material for skip counting. You can avail a FREE copy by clicking on the image below. We’ll use this next week so keep visiting my site if you want to see how we use it at home. Enjoy!

Montessori Inspired Skip Counting

Thursday, November 13, 2014

skipcounting copy I wonder how you teach kids to skip count? When I was younger this was one of the thing that I despise the most. Why? Because basically they just want us to memorise it. With the available resources now, I want my boys to love skip counting…. as I always tell Mavi, you will use this technique all the time for the rest of your life :)

We had a few practice on this but I never had a the chance to come up with a serious unit or lesson for this. Now he’s a bit older to understand and appreciate, I decided to come up with sheets to get him into the skip counting thingy.

First I created the hundred sheets, and discuss the concept about skip counting (by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s). I cross-out the count in our sheets and made him mark it using our Do-a-Dot markers.

“Look Mom! It has a pattern!”

Now using these visuals, we put it into action using our decanomial beads and hundred board number tiles (both Montessori Math materials from Absorbent Minds UK).

Here we have the counting by 5’s.

And I compared it to the counting by 10’s.

And his least favourite skip counting is by 2’s (because it takes a long time to read 10, he said LOL).

Now well be practicing this for the entire week. I’m coming up with materials so we can use the concept using non-Montessori materials. I’ll be sharing it with you so watch out for it.

Follow Pinay Homeschooler's board Montessori on Pinterest.

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
TGIF Linky Party
Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
Share It Saturday
The Natural Homeschool

Water Cycle: All about Water

Monday, November 10, 2014

Last week we worked on the first part of our Water Cycle study which is all about water. The objectives of this study are the following:

Define the states of matter using water
Discover the properties of water
Analyze the water cycle

WATER

Water illustrates the three states of matter: solid (ice), liquid (water) and gas (steam). The presentation includes a glass of water, a bowl of ice and a cup of hot water (steam is not visible in the picture). Mavi explored the three states, touching feeling and tasting (we waited for the hot water to cool down).

“Mom, they don’t have a taste!”

Yes, because water is tasteless, odourless and transparent.

EXPLORING THE PROPERTIES OF WATER

Then we discuss what makes the water liquid, solid and gas. I pointed out that temperature affects the state of the water. If the temperature is low (and freezing), the water turns into ice (solid) because the molecules that in the water does not move around as much. Thus they form into crystalline (rigid) structure which turns it into ice. As seen on the photos below, we made ice… and took a photo of before and after exposing the water to low temperature.

I asked Mavi to look for a spot in his body that can melt the ice easily. One, he ate some ice…. and then another he put some in his underarm LOL. Try this with your kids!

For water turning into gas, that’s because it is exposed to a hot or high temperature with molecules moving very fast with large spaces between molecules. Here I showed Mavi how to produce steam.