I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! Ours was full and happy. Today, we jumped back into school, even though I felt a little under-prepared. Within the next two months, we are planning to move (again, just a couple of miles this time) and welcome a new family member! Obviously, I am on the look out for ways to make learning fun and easy for all of us. Please post in the comments if you have a great resource to share.
One of my friends gave us a copy of Life of Fred Apples, by Stanley Schimdt which we enjoyed twice, and just before Christmas, Life of Fred Butterflies arrived in the mail. My kids find the books hilarious, and my son is really motivated to do the exercises at the end, in order to earn the right to progress to the next chapter. The Schimdt jumps right in with counting by fives in Life of Fred Apples. Now in Life of Fred Butterflies, he is asking for counting by twos. This is a second grade skill according to Common Core, and a little tricky for my five-year-old. I came up with this exercise to make it more concrete.
The only materials needed are a measuring tape and a bunch of clothespins. Before we got started I read, Penguin Pairs:Counting by 2's by Amanda Doering Tourville which we had borrowed from our local library. After we finished, I directed my son to begin with two and put a clothes pin on every second number. He went to work eagerly. As he worked, I asked, "What's that number?" If he was not sure, I helped him get the correct name which helps us work toward our kindergarten level objective of being able to name all the numbers up to one hundred. (CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.A.1).
When he finished, he was so proud he insisted on taking a photo of his own.
Later, when we came to the related question in Life of Fred, he referred back to his number line.
You may also like this post:
Thanks for sharing this tip at Mom's Library! You were featured this week!
ReplyDeleteAwesome! Thank you.
ReplyDelete