Pumpkin Math (Loosely)

I am a bit behind on blogging.  A COUPLE WEEKS AGO, on the way home from school, Eli said to me, "Can we work on my math today?"  Music to my ears.  Seriously.  Here's what we came up with:

I decided to have the kids investigate the different ways that we can combine numbers to make a total of 6.  I had both of these papers set up at the table, exactly like you see above, and invited the kids to explore.

We started, of course, by eating the candy pumpkin.  The six candy corns were used as the counters for the activity.  I had a bag of candy corn and pumpkins in the pantry that had been purchased to top some cupcakes.  We opened the bag a bit early.

For Eli's paper, he would count out the candy corn needed for the sum.  So, he would put 2 candy corns under the 2 (in the 2 + 4) and then 4 candy corns under the 4.  We could then count the total and find that 2 + 4 was indeed 6.  We worked our way around the paper, marveling at the many ways you could get a total of 6.  It's true;  we marveled.

On Abby's paper, there were boxes drawn in which she would place the candy corns.  With her, this was more of an exercise of practicing one-to-one correspondence:  one candy corn goes in one square.  Many times, she would try to put two candy corns in one square.  As with Eli, we would count the total number of candy corns once they were in the squares to find a total of 6. Again, for Abby, it was great practice of counting with one-to-one correspondence as she does like to count the same candy twice.  2 + 4 is definitely not 7.

Counting and adding away.

Some fun extensions:

• Investigate what happens when you do 2 + 4 and 4 + 2.  Does the same thing happen for 5 + 1 and 1 + 5?  YAY!!  You just taught your kid the Commutative Property of Addition.
• How about some Algebra?  I have 2 candy corns...how many more do I need to make 6?  Essentially, you just solved the equation 2 + x = 6 and found that x = 4.
• And now the fun part...SUBTRACTION.  Once all of the addition has been completed, start eating!  I have 6 candy corns and I just ate one.  How many are left?
• Here's a tricky one:  I have three candy corns left.  Can I eat 6 of them?  NO WAY.  3 - 6 and 6 - 3 are not the same thing.  You just taught your kid that subtraction is NOT commutative.

I titled this "Pumpkin Math (Loosely)" because that is what it is.  The pumpkin in the center of the paper is meaningless, it could just as easily be an apple or a Thanksgiving turkey or a Christmas tree or completely blank.  You could also investigate ANY number.  I chose 6 simply because it seemed like a good amount of candy to eat...enough to feel like you were eating a decent treat, but not enough to make kids crazy.   All that to say, the pumpkin was festive for fall and we got to eat 6 pieces of candy.  Ok, really, we got to eat 6 + 1 pieces of candy, including the pumpkin.

Doing math while eating candy with my sweet kids...that was a fun day.

Refrigerator Abacus

My math teacher heart has been happy lately as Eli has been showing a great interest in numbers.  He is frequently asking me things like:

• What comes after 39?  49?  59?  (I love how is he is spotting the pattern of tens.)
• What is 5 + 8?  (or any combination of numbers he comes up with)
• What is between 8 and 9?
• How much is 100?

As a former middle school math teacher, I can hardly contain myself when he asks these types of questions.  In fact, I have always been curious about how young a child can learn algebraic concepts.  Oh my poor, poor, guinea pig children.  One of our favorite driving-in-the-van games is "What is Bigger?"  I will ask Eli, "What is bigger...5 or 11?"  We will also play "What is Smaller?"  It is fun to see his grasp of number concepts growing.  To help Eli visualize the idea of addition, we made a Refrigerator Abacus.

Here's what it looks like:

So, I taped two green boxes onto the fridge, using painter's tape, with an addition sign taped in between.  Each box has the numbers 1 - 6 that can be put inside.  I then tied fishing line from the fridge handle to a magnetic hook, with 12 beads strung on it.  You want to make sure that you have enough beads to represent the largest sum that could be made.  The biggest we could do would be 6 + 6, hence 12 beads on our abacus.  I had wanted to be able to do 10 + 10, but when I strung 20 beads on the string, it covered most of the width of the fridge, not allowing much room for moving the beads around.

A closer look at the numbers and boxes:

Each set of numbers 1- 6 was done in a different color with a matching strip in each box.  That way, the kids would know to which side the numbers belonged. 

My vision for this was that I would call out numbers to Eli, he would put the numbers in the boxes, and then use the beads to find the sums.  We made a little video so you could see how we are using our abacus.  The video is a bit shaky because, as we were videoing, I realized that our full trash can was right out the open.  Oops and Sorry.  Also, thank you to Abby for her keyboard accompaniment. 

I had hoped that Eli would be playing with this a lot, excitedly working with and exploring number sums.  That has not been the case.  Apparently, he is not as nerdy as I am, prefering to play with his Legos than do math at the refrigerator.    But, if I catch him in the right moment, or if he asks me an addition question that we can work out on the fridge, he will cooperate.  Abby, however, might be as nerdy as me, becuase she loves to play with the numbers and move the beads.  That's my girl.

All in all, it's been fun.  What I might need, though, is a WALL Abacus so that we can work with bigger numbers.  We'll save that one for another day...