Using Blocks to Teach Math

It was nice to admit outloud to another homeschooling mom the other day that I completely failed at teaching math.  See, we have officially reached CJ's actual learning level of math and I'm so used to him picking it up super easy that I was lazy and didn't teach him the concrete subtraction that borrows from each greater place value.  I taught him the shortcut.  On paper.  Bad homeschool mom.  I know better, and since I was able to admit my fault to a dear friend I was ready to go back and commit to making it right.  So today, we did subtraction with blocks.  LOTS of blocks.  And got through 3 problems in a full hour.  ONLY THREE!  I had to keep telling myself (in my head) to chill out.  Because seriously it was SO slow.  So there you go, a little error on my part.  It happens to the best of us.

Preschool Blocks

EMan is working his way through the Math-U-See Primer book.  He's gotten bored with the reviews happening in preschool and was ready to move on.  We flew through the first lesson and then stopped short at his instructional level.  He is working on identifying combinations that make ten.  I knew I needed to pull out CJ's old set of blocks and just play with them making groups of ten.  So, this is what I've done with what's on hand.  I happen to have a ton of unifix cubes.  I picked some colors that matched Math-U-See the best I could, stacked them together and then labeled them with numbers.  It was then Eman's job to identify what two stacks of blocks would equal 10.  Though successful, I would love for him to work more on this concept, however he is bored with it already.  Any ideas to make the game more fun?

Aquarium Visit

We had a fantastic time at the aquarium today with our homeschooling group.  My preschoolers spent the week talking about the letter J and Jellyfish so we took the opportunity to go see real ones.  It's such a pleasure to go on these outings to extend our learning and have fun with our friends!