Fun Math

Last month at our local homeschooling meeting I know I astounded my ex-math professor friend when I told her I was actually having fun with math. Math has always been something we got out of the way so we could get to the "fun stuff", which for me was reading, writing and drawing. I'm experimenting with Annalise and using lots of games and real books to see if we can learn the basics.

I thought I would share a few titles that we have been having fun with. Annalise asks for math every day. We'll see if I can manage to keep this fire burning instead of the dousing with the boredom I usually provide with endless workbook pages. Thanks to the Living Math site and the library, we have lots of books to try.

Number Jugglers is something I've been using with Annalise and the boys. Everyday Annalise asks for the odd/even game or the number ladder game. The boys like some of the games too. Or I should say the one who is winning at the moment likes it. At least they admit it's better than workbooks. It's been a great way to review the four basic operations. Often we can all play together adjusting the game for the different levels by not dealing as many cards to the older ones as the book suggests. We have also been using Fraction Jugglers for the boys. My summer experiment is to see if I can teach them all about fractions while reviewing what they already know in a fun way .

Annalise just loved this and other books by Greg Tang. Sometimes I'm the one who needs a different way to do something after doing it six times before. This particular title involves finding addition strategies.
The library had many in this series so I brought home a large stack to read to Annalise. This little title taught her about negative numbers. Since she is already in the habit of loving books, these are an easy way to introduce new topics. At the end of each book there are reinforcement and activity suggestions. I think this one stack I have could keep us busy for quite a while.