These were the inspiration for this week's posts about peg dolls. I spent a couple evenings this week working on a set of math gnomes for Blaze, using the 2-3/8" wooden peg dolls. Then we read the first story from the following blog:
The math gnomes and the story were a big hit with Blaze! He had already worked on his regular math lesson in the Math-U-See workbook, but he didn't think of the gnomes as another math lesson, he thought of them as a game, as we tried to act out the story while I read.
When I explained to my oldest daughter, Ula, about how the math gnomes introduce all four math processes at once, she said something along the lines of, "Well, it will be a while before he gets to division", but this is not actually the case, because I gave Blaze 10 of the glass aquarium "jewels" that are used as the gnomes' treasure, and he was able to split them up equally between two tiny baskets, so he is already doing division.
Here's the first lesson Blaze did with the Math Gnomes:
He is enjoying this chapter of the Math-U-See Alpha book, as well. It is using a story, of sorts, to teach adding with 9. The story is that 9 very badly wants to be a 10, so every time another number is added to it, it turns on it's vacuum cleaner (children are encouraged to make a sucking noise at this point) and it sucks up one unit and turns into a 10. Each problem on the workbook page is acted out using blocks.
5 comments:
Love the maths gnomes! I really like some of the Steiner/Wardolf early years stuff and the best bit about homeschooling (or home education as we prefer to say in the UK) is that we can chose the bits that work for us and leave those that don't.
Love the math gnomes!
My youngest, Kayla, is 8 years old and we use math gnomes with her math too. She is also working on all 4 math processes together, and it's turning out great. Many family members (outside of our own little bunch) have been surprised that she can divide almost as well as she can add. Such a different way to approach math than most of us had growing up!
I love the math gnomes. I missed out on these with my daughter, but I'm looking forward to being able to use these with my son when he gets a little older. We use Math-U-See as well.
I book marked this for later. Sounds like a great thing to use with Jasmine!
Those are adorable! I wonder if I have four blank bodies left? I may just have to copy this idea too. I am really enjoying wondering around your blog. :)
Val
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