Teaching Math to an Older Child

Any recommendations on what to do for teaching an older child math? He is not interested in dot cards. How do I introduce addition without number knowledge? Do I just do +1, the +2…

Thanks!

Hello

suggestions

  1. I Use Little Math with grid instead of random dots
  2. I use Kumon books, critical thinking books (my favorites)
  3. use math in practical ways … I will look for a page that was given to us at the institute for math excersices and posted here I do not have it handy.
  4. do higher math with small numbers like 1+ ? = 2 then 3 + ? = 3 so on to 1+1+? = 4
  5. play with cartesian plane and games
  6. play play play

hope this helps.

Gloria

Hi,

May I know if teaching maths using grid a Kumon teaching style? understand Glenn Doman’s uses random dots.

thanks.

sonic

Yes Doman and Shichida are both promoters of randowm dots, you are right it is the best specially for children newborn to 3 years old, BUT when we talk about an OLDER child that will not perceive quantity anylonger and are not interested in random dots, the next best thing as far as I am concern are the grid dots; It has helped my daughter tremendously and LM has done a great job adding variety to the icons so kids will want to do them - she was 4 when we started.

Hope this helps.

Gloria

Gloria,

Thanks for your response. When you asy grid, are you talking about 10’s frames? Where did you get the Kumon books? And, excuse my ignorance, what are cartesian planes?

Thanks again!

No worries just one question - are you in the states? I need to know so I can guide you to the right places.

Hi Gloria,

Thanks for your advice.

When you started grid dots with your 4 yo, do you still follow glenn doman’s method, five numbers a day, slowly adding one number and retire one at a time? I’m thinking, can we speed up a little bit, since they are older, should be able to receive more than five a day.

Thanks.

Regards
sonic

Chispa: Well, if you are in the states, you can buy Kumon books in Barnes and Noble, they have a great selection of children books.

Sonic4r: I am doing more than 5 dots per day, well I was doing more 10 to 15 (when she was 4yo) now she just turned 5 and we are more into books, we still use LM for many things like multiplication table, substraction, equations that I customize myself, etc… we use alot of word problems from criticalthinking.com books - I love them and so does my daughter. HTese are the ones we are using :

  1. Building Thinking Skills® Primary Item #: 05231
    Grade Level: K - 1 Subject Area: Critical Thinking
    DONE

  2. Visual Perceptual Skill Building® Book 1
    Item #: 04701 Grade Level: PreK - 1 Subject Area: Critical Thinking
    DONE

  3. Can You Find Me? K-1
    Item #: 03802 Grade Level: K - 1 Subject Area: Critical Thinking
    ALMOST DONE

4 Memory Challenge! Item #: 09410
Grade Level: K - 12+
Subject Area: Critical Thinking
WORKING ON IT

  1. Mind Benders® Beginning 2
    Item #: 01330 Grade Level: 1 - 2 Subject Area: Critical Thinking
    BOOKS 1 and warm up Done - currently working on this one

Next week we will start the abacus training with mathsecret.com I followed them for several weeks since someone posted a video here; I talked a couple of times to the owner and I am ready to try it out. I will report my progress in 2 or 3 months or earlier if I notice substantial improvement.

Hope this helps.

Gloria

Thanks so much!!! :biggrin: I am headed to Barnes and Noble tomorrow!!! Karma to you for helping me start my Andrew.

Thanks again!

thanks Gloria.
all the best to you for your abacus training. :slight_smile:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but puzzles are a good way to get kids reeady for math. We also do Mighty Minds, which gets kids thinking about size, shapes, colors, building larger images, and critical thinking. On top of the stuff listed above this might be fun for your children!
Thanks everyone for sharing all that info, I want to start a more Doman style math program with my son who just turned 4 and his helped me so much!!

Waterdreamer you are right !! how did I miss that ! Puzzles are great the way to workout the brain; I started with my daughter these games with School zone products:

Hidden pictures games and puzzles they have like 4 or 5 books on each one here is the link to one of those:
http://www.schoolzone.com/content/super-deluxe-hidden-pictures-workbook

they also have word puzzles - then I did the Wink program, photographic memory and observation training, then I designed the observation training and mandales that I posted here already ( I am working on more ) and what we are doing now is going for heavy picture puzzles where they have lots of detail and it really challenges you even as an adult. Here is a link to some: http://books.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?WRD=picture+puzzles&box=picture%20puzzl&pos=-1

NOTE: to get to the barnes and noble puzzles stage took me a year of training, now she can find the differences quicker than me; also another excersice we do all the time is when we read any book, if I look for pages that are proper for the excersice that has clear number of different Items, once I am done with the page I ask her to look at the pictures of that page because I will ask her 3 questions, she takes her time then I close the book and ask her 3 questions ie: there were 3 females, what was the color of their shoes? there was a desk, how many items were on top of that desk? how many bunch of flowers do you remember seen? what was the color of the tie of the oldest man? etc… obviously these are my questions nowdays she can stimate the number of dots in a tie, when we started they were very simple like how many girls? were they happy or crying? Very important to set the kids to WIN and alwasy celebrate no matter what the answer is, if Leena says 5 and the answer is 7 I will scream great you were so close that is genius ! can you believe you got that close !! next…

Same if you are shopping at the mall, pass a window and then ask her if she remember how many maniquis there were, what were they wearing? any pets? any huge pictures the idea is to get used to be very detail oriented all they time you never know when mom is going to throw the game question and tickles will follow no matter what the answer is in fact Leena loves me chasing her around the house so that is one of our favorite rewards (plus is very afforable LOL)

Hope this helps!!

Gloria

ps: :wink:

NOTE2 : my daughter never liked small mazes, it took her longer because they are hard to see, she likes the mazes that are one full page big and full - same with regular puzzles we started with extra large size like :http://www.melissaanddoug.com/dyn_prod.php?p=2861
http://www.melissaanddoug.com/dyn_prod.php?p=421

then follow with large size 100 pieces then 200 - we do not like small pieces 500 or 1000 parts
you can find these puzzles at the above website but they are heavy if you are in the states check for the closest taps store you will find them there, if not they will order them for you at no extra charge or shipping as it is an item they should carry because it is in the catalog. Just find the closest store to your house.

http://www.tapsonline.com/

Our boy is 3 years 3 months. We tried Doman-type dots beginning when he was about 2 years 4 months – no luck, they bored him. Then we did some math presentations made by me and others, and then lots of playing and manipulatives (e.g., counting beans). I actually think that everything helped a little, but the manipulatives seemed to be the most effective. But it seemed like we were coming to the end of the stuff we could teach him easily with manipulatives, and he seemed to be ready for more.

It came to a head when I sort of on a whim bought him a cheap workbook called “Addition” with stickers. Lo and behold, he suddenly was all fired up to work in this book. Boy, he loves those stickers. He has made it totally clear that the main reason he wanted to do addition was in order to earn stickers! So, we found a bunch of appropriate reward stickers (from a Sticker Encyclopedia of Transportation book…or whatever it’s called) and started using those for some other things (like penmanship practice). He was actually doing addition problems (with my help, of course, and really it just amounted to knowing which pictures to count up), but I knew the book wasn’t very good and he should be using a “real” curriculum if he’s going to work in a workbook.

Sooo…a few weeks ago I investigated math methods/curricula for a while, and though I certainly can’t say that I did an exhaustive or even very thorough review, FWIW I decided to go with Singapore Math.

The books finally arrived today, which is why this thread caught my eye. So far, I absolutely love the books and I think I made a good choice. The method seems very consistent with the whole “thinking about and playing with numbers” approach behind using manipulatives and Montessori. It’s also very visually oriented. It’s very well thought out and does not seem to resort to gimmicks or a lot of unnecessary drilling. Instead, it seems to lead the child to grasp the concepts or thinking behind math.

The kid did 6 pages of (fairly easy, but challenging enough) exercises with great interest.

I chose the method, by the way, because Singapore’s test scores have been tops in the world according to many tests, the method is very highly recommended in the home schooling community, and I saw some sample pages on http://www.singaporemath.com/ which I thought were exactly what was needed. By the way, when I ordered it, they sent me Kindergarten Math Textbooks A and B, instead of Kindergarten Math Textbook A and Activity Book A. They responded to my mail immediately, and told me to keep B and they’ll send A separately. So, seems like good customer service.

Thank you for your response! Andrew has not responded well to the dots either! He sees them and says NOT THESE! I am worried because I have tried the manipilatives and he is stuck in counting the object 1 by 1 past 4 . Can that be corrected? I imagine maybe with more experience. As far as the books, Andrew is not very fond of paper pencil activities. When you do the workbooks, do you write the answers for your child?

Thanks!

We’re working on writing numbers and letters now, so we put our hands over his and help him write the number, after he’s figured it out. But actually with Kindergarten A it’s mainly drawing lines and circles etc., which he can handle. I’m very sure his writing skills wouldn’t have been good enough to do this six months ago…

You mean he can recognize quanitities by sight only up to four? Well, our boy can sometimes recognize five…but sometimes he mixes up 3 and 4. So you’re not alone there…

It’s good to hear that. My son is doing Right Start which wants children to be able to recognize by sight numbers up to five. He can do one, two and five but three and four he struggles with. We are really working on it, but he really would rather just count.

linzy tina is the same age like your son . we also got rightstart math ,we are moving slowly , for a while she confused 3 and 4 but now it suddenly clicked up to five and we moved to 6 .it was a bit frustrating to me till she got it . she is not at all into writing , she loves playing with her dolls and animals , play store so i used any opportunity to count with her .
love
viv

Thanks Viv, It’s good to know it’s not just us. Its frustrating because he just counts, because that’s what i was encouraging him to do with simple math until we got the RightStart system. So, for now we are doing the up to 5 lessons a second time and working on the games. I am going ahead and working on the other numbers up to 10, but if he doesn’t get the instant recognition of numbers to 5 by then we will probably just camp out there and work with the games until he gets it.

Now are you guys showing your children like a few items and asking them to tell you how many there are without counting? Please can you explain in detail.

Thank you to all for your replies! It sounds like Andrew is right there with your kids. I was a bit frustrated but attended a workshop Add Advantage on Math (I am a teacher) and they really talked up the importance of really understanding 0-5. So I can show Andrew 1-4 items (from books we read, pictures anything that shows items, I ask questions about what he sees) and consistently can “name” how many he sees up to just 4. I got this fantastic idea from Gloria D.

As far as writing, Andrew has not been interested until I got Scribble and Write from Leapfrog and he is enjoying trying it out.