Math Through Play

Race to the Top is a number recognition, writing practice, and counting practice game that uses a ten by ten grid with the digits 0-9 (or numbers 1-10) written on the bottom and involves flipping a playing card and writing the number you picked in the appropriate column (Aces are one and face cards are either zero or ten). The Neighborhood children had fun predicting which number would come in first, then second and third and so on! 

Dice Addition was another hit. It’s pretty straightforward: Roll two dice and add the numbers together. Seems simple, but a lot of important math skills are involved. Looking at the pips on a die, some children are practicing one-to-one correspondence (counting them one by one) or subitizing (identifying the number of things in a set by quickly looking at them as a whole rather than counting, something we work on during Number Talks). As they practice writing the number sentences or equations, they’re also noticing patterns in addition facts, like, 3+4=7 AND 4+3=7 (the Commutative Law) or 6+2 and 5+3 BOTH equal 8. Some children were ready to move on to Dice Subtraction. 

Domino Addition uses and reinforces many of the same skills as Dice Addition. But, rather than rolling two dice, the children pick a domino, figure out how many dots are on each side and add them together.

As children are playing these games, teachers are suggesting strategies (often calling back to a Number Talk conversation), correcting misconceptions, and encouraging children to use resources like a number line to help themselves calculate. As you can see, all of these games use items you may already have at home: cards, dice, dominos, and paper and pencil. So ask your child to teach you how to play and have fun “math-ing” together!

Kittens and Robins at Work

Briefly, in addition to all of this number and math work, the Kittens and Robins are continuing to explore wind. We’ve been reading lots of books about wind, weather, kites and the like. And, we continued to build and experiment with our pompom mazes, moving the pompom through the maze with our own wind (breath) through a straw. Check out our video of a Pom Pom Wind Maze in action! So much patience, problem solving, and concentration involved from start to finish.

We also talked and journaled about our favorite parts of the apple picking trip and wrote thank you notes to our friends at Meadowbrook Farm for a wonderful visit to the orchard. Lastly, with the Links team, we started an ongoing project that we’re all really jazzed about related to the masks we’re making for the upcoming Mask Parade and much more. The Kittens’ book is Every Autumn Comes the Bear  by Jim Arnosky and the Robins’ book is Trout Are Made of Trees by April Sayre. Each Neighborhood group is becoming very familiar with both books as we work in our smaller groups and the whole group researching the characters and setting of the stories. We look forward to giving you an in-depth look into this exciting project in our next update!