Math Slate!

Have I mentioned I love our whiteboards?  I don’t know how “green” they are, honestly, because we go through markers (especially the cheap $-store markers) at an  astounding rate.

Nevertheless, there are very few educational supplies that I can honestly say that all four children use in their studies… some of them quite often.

Here are some math problems Naomi made up following today’s JUMP Math lesson on Counting On – a method of solving simple addition/subtraction problems using finger-counting.

This is very much how each page of our JUMP Math workbook is structured:

The top section is an “example” where she has traced the numbers for me to demonstrate the technique.  There are three “ants”, and she traced the next three numbers. (4, 8, 5 – I don’t know why these are random and out of sequence, but anyway)

In the next section down, there are three ants, and she had me trace the numbers.

In the final section, there’s a “bonis” question, which is slightly more challenging than the others on the page – in this case, because she didn’t draw the ants to go with.  Oh, there’s also a place where she’s written “nayme her” for me to write my name… as I’ve done.

The top right of the “page” gives three checkboxes – one for each problem, and the instruction, “check when you’re done.”  There’s also a helpful “reference box”, as on some of the JUMP Math pages, with the word “count” and the numbers 1 through 5 (reversed in every way).

Because JUMP is so comprehensive, the lessons run a bit longer than I’d like, and she gets squirmy.  Promising her time on the whiteboard – ie “bossy time” -  afterwards got her through it today, though!