This week our different math adventures all came together to focus on place value. Froggy's main math curriculum is still Singapore Math. We reached the point where the student is asked to add numbers which total between 10 and 20. Froggy has been doing this for awhile now in Dreambox math but she has been doing it in a sort of gestalt manner without getting the concept of place value. Singpore, and through it I, have been emphasizing it. The process is very simple. Rather than just counting up from whatever first number is presented, she makes a group of ten and then adds the ones to that group of ten. It does not sound like a big change but for Froggy it was.
Dreambox has several games that Froggy has been playing that work with place value even though I am not sure she sees the connections to what she is doing in Singapore. For some reason when playing Dreambox the ideas seem to come much more readily to Froggy. The current batch of games are focusing on making groups of ten or putting values that change by tens in order.
We also added in a game of change with this and I think it was finally got everything to click. Dimes are by their nature groups of ten and pennies loose ones so it clicked for Froggy when she was counting the change we received at a store. We played games trading nickels and pennies into dimes and back again.
I just love when math finally clicks for them!
ReplyDeleteWe got stuck in the same place of DreamBox because Anna was not getting the idea of place value, especially when she was asked to break big value into, say, 35 and 40. I guess we will have to revisit it when she is a bit older, and I like the idea of working with pennies and dimes as manipulatives.
ReplyDelete