Games Games Games

I just wanted to share a couple of new games that we are really enjoying.

1. Numbers League

Rainbow Resources had a free shipping special last week so I looked into a couple of math games. I bought Equate... which I don't think will be "please please can we play it!" type game but I hope it makes math practice a bit less torturous. The other game was Numbers League: an Adventure in Addiplication. Your goal is to create a team of super heroes to capture villains. G loves it! It's not even like doing math! he said. LOL I was really impressed with how his mental math improved after a few rounds.

2. Lego Harry Potter
We are a fan of the new build it yourself Lego Game boards. First we got Minotaurus this summer, which we play often. Then for Christmas, we've been having family parties for 2 weeks now, G got the Harry Potter version. It is a bit more difficult to build initially but it all stays together when you are finished. I always imagine those stair cases moving on me when I read the books and daydream... well here they do.

What are you playing in school this winter?

Gamma Here We Come!

G finished the pages in Beta a few weeks ago but we have been reviewing and working on speed. Monday,we will start Gamma and spend the rest of the year in Multiplication.

I cannot wait to check out the resources listed by Jimmie & Dana.

Money Study

Math is going speedy lately. I thank Math U See and their stress on place value for that. We sailed through regrouping and studied counting pennies, nickels, and dimes this week. I could not believe the quickness with which G picked this up. Yeah G!!

G counting out change in a piggy bank.

One of the Piggy Banks. Each pig has an amount written on it.
G had to make all of the different combinations for each amount.

We worked through these storybooks during the week.
G even wanted to repeat stories! WooHoo!

Yeah!!! G!!!

G finished his addition timed test today!!! He can finish each set in 60 seconds or less.

MUS Clock

G is great with time using a Judy clock but "real" time is different. So I peeked in the back of our Math U See book and checked out the appendix on time. Really strange teaching time with blocks but everything else they teach seems to work so we are giving it a try. We watched the video... great visual. But who can leave blocks lying all over the table? Not me. So I thought I would find a cheapy clock at Goodwill and try to make a block clock.

Cheapy Clock

New Center

5 Block photo

Glue it all together

Voila!

Not Perfect but I think that it will make a big difference. I wrote an H: and an :M on the hands. We can keep it down where we can handle it rather than it hanging high on the wall. I am really proud of it.

Week Two Math

We started our Math U See lessons this week. They are going really well. The topic is place value... we build , write and read numbers. If you are not familiar with MUS it is a mastery approach rather than a spiral approach to math. So rather than touching on a topic now and moving on to eventually touch on it again, students work on one topic until they master it. By their definition of mastery... able to do the problems independently and correctly, and teach the concept to someone else... we could be done with place value but I think we will stay with it another week to try to work on fitting one and two digit numbers into the Hundreds, Tens, & Units diagram and transference of knowledge. Oh, by the way, the one G is teaching back to isn't me... it's SuperRock pictured there is the bottom corner.
We also started graphing objects this week. G is good at more/ less and sorting. I just need to remember to keep my skill levels on his level and not my old teaching level. It can be tough to be a Kindergarten teacher after teaching 2nd grade and up for so many years.