Story Sums, Problem Sums

Kai loves story sums and he enjoys working on them using his concepts of number bonds as well as counting forward and backward to help him solve the story.

And so fast, he has grasped the concepts well though at times, he would be careless with his calculations. I am beginning to notice that he is counting without using his fingers or even drawing and that he would pause and think using his head. And some answers just came straight from him from his head instead of counting.

I am hoping to teach him the part-whole model later today and through next week to aid him in his learning and a skill for him to solve problem sums.

Number bonds and addition number sentences

Kai is graspping the concept of addition very well and could master without using any manipulatives and just using his head to count forward by verbalise it. And we have reinforce the concept by allowing him more time to work on the quiz on the computer. He started to go beyond the number 1 to 10 and he could add more than double digits and I am not forcing him to master up to double digits since we will be coming to that later part.

We were looking at number bonds and transferring the data from it to form addition number sentences and helping him to see the part-whole concepts before we move on to story sums or problem sums. I would always ask him how he came up with his answers to check on his understanding and to see the processes that went through his heads. I am focusing more on this process then how the correct answer as I think it is important to check his understanding and the journey instead of the products. And many a time, I required him to explain to me the process and how he derive the working (number) sentence. At time, I would pretend to be the teacher and Kai would guide me to the process. It is amazing to see how he master the technique and also to crack his head when the question differ from the usual style and come up the answer and explain the processes to me.

Adding and more adding...number fun...

Kai is really enjoying himself working with numbers. He had so much fun when we first started with Maths still the middle of August this year after our move.

Though we have been waiting with Maths daily since he was about 2.5 years old but without books and basically through play and manipulatives that he shouts out the answer. It has been a long journey for him and know he would sit down on his own to work on his sums and we could even play counting games in the car, waiting in the queue, etc.

I have started Kai on Addition for number 1 to 10 and Kai was so keen that he was also working with numbers beyond 1 to 10 on his own. And his face brighted up once he got the answer. Maths is so fun for him that he is treating it more like a game and enjoy working on it daily. He could work on it in the morning, in the afternoon and even at night.

So to reward him for his effort in Maths, I allowed him 15 minutes a day on the computer working on Maths.

See the samples of what he works with,





Kai works on this website for fun when he is not working on his books or using papers to write out sums. And now with all these educational website available to aid in homeschooling, it is also a good resource to tap on in our homeschooling journey making learning more fun and colourful.

Website:
1. The Little Animal Activity Centre Maths Addition

Addition to 10...

After working on Number Bonds for a couple of weeks, we are finally moving on to Addition to 10. Not that Kai could not simply add to ten, this time round, I am working with Kai to work mentally instead of using manipulatives to do counting.

Being really mischievous, at times, he would use his fingers to help him. So I started challenging him to count with his fingers but try to imagine the manipulatives in his head and count them quietly. Though at first, he could count out using his mouth, he was able to figure out slowly without speaking out during counting.

I taught him to count forward for additions and we started having some little quizzes with each other. And he finds it really fun counting.

Number Bonds

We finally completed "Number Bonds" and Kai had fun working on lots of different types number bond questions. And he really enjoyed himself working on them before he finally decided that he is ready to move on to the next topic.

To be very sure that Kai has mastered his number bond concepts, I made him work on alot of number bond puzzles and also looking at different ways to solve number bond puzzles. I thought him to look for clue to start solving the puzzles. And after that he was hooked on the puzzles and asked for more.


Click to see puzzle samples

More number bonds

We are still having fun with number bonding. It was fun to play with marbles and Kai is getting better with number bonding each day and he is eager to do a book to compile all the combination that can add up to the number.

We started working on number 1 to 5, I have Kai thought up of all the combination that is possible to add up to the numbers with the help of marbles. And we are still look at them to make sure that Kai has a strong foundation for the concept of number bonds.

Number bond

We continued exploring Number Bond and we were happy with the progress. Kai has comprehended the topic well and is graspping the concepts well. He was able to see the addition and subtraction statements and pointed out to me.

We were finally ready to look at addition and subtraction using number bonds even though Kai could do simple addition and subtraction up to at least 20.

Number bonding for number 1 to 10

We finally started to revise on number bonding from 1 to 10 and making sure Kai understand the topic. He enjoyed it and was able to give me many examples.

Examples:

For 8,

8 is made up of 0 and 8.
8 is made up of 4 and 4.
8 is made up of 6 and 2.

And he was able to show me using marbles, how he came up with the answers. I made him a teacher for a day and he taught me about number bonding. I am glad that he could still recall the concept that we learnt sometime back.

More number riddles...

We have not moved on much for Maths yet as Kai got addicted by number riddles and kept pestering me for more. We have been making guess for number riddle during maths and even after dinner, he asked Daddy to make guess with him. He is getting better with his number and quick each time now when he make the guess.

Just an example of our number reader,

I am bigger than 5 but smaller than 10. I am between 5 and 9. I am an odd number. Who am I?

He is having a great time with numbers and telling me that I should do more with him.

Learning more about Map....

These two days, Kai has observed me as I looked through map and starting to plan on our trip for 5 adults and a child from Sydney to Brisbane. We are looking forward for family visiting us during December and now started with the planning and booking of accommodation.(Mummy here, having headaches booking accommodation and planning.)

Kai enjoyed looking at map and we are still working on my map for our neighbourhood. And here, we were looking at more maps and travelbooks. It was good to show Kai and tell him about the different symbols on the maps and he was looking through them himself and asking questions here and then. He loves to look at map of places and road direction.

We finally have a list of iterneries for our trip and deciding the route to take, required me to read through more travel guides and also looking at the distance for routes as we have 2 old folks with us. And Kai was trying to imitiate me with a paper and copy what I have noted down, he was telling me, he's planning a trip for all his little toys.

Bring numbers and Maths into real life...

We are working on riddles about numbers, we are going slowly making sure that Kai has strong concepts and making sure he has his right foundation on Maths.

We are working on riddles on numbers before we move on and I think it is very important at his age to have the full grasp of Maths working with small numbers. We also play around with number daily or when we have guests around that we asked him to count the number of guests or at times informed him of the total number we were expecting and asked him to make tell how many more yet to arrive. In a way, he could be apply the concept he has learnt like more than, less than etc.

We had guests for dinner yesterday and Kai helped me to measure water and sugar using spoon for making agar-agar (Jelly). I do not have a measure cup and measuring spoon. We were using a 250ml cup and a 50ml cup to measure 900ml of water and used tablespoons to measure tablespoon to measures the amount of sugars for (125g). It was maths in real life and it was fun for Kai.

And last Sunday after Church Service, we were home making snowskins mooncakes and Kai helped me to measure the amount of water using a new 6ml syringe and we made 1.5 dozens of mooncakes for ourselves and a couple for our friends.

Will upload the mooncake onto my recipe sites when I have time this week or early next week.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5........

We are almost done for number 1 to 10 but Kai got hooked on working on number patterns and rearranging them in ascending and descending orders and comparing them. We used the Logico Learning Systems and work on numbers and he had a great time solving them.

The colour pictures created alot of talking points for us and we have fun discussing about them and think of scenerios. And end of the week, we are finally moving on to Number Bonds.

Playing with numbers on Friday...

We were having lots of fun with number. Making riddles out of numbers, getting each other to guess. Kai simply loved to play and have fun with numbers and it was good that he enjoyed what he was doing on Friday.

Working independently on the Maths Revision Book that a dear friend has given him when we were in Singapore. He enjoyed those questions, number patterns, number order and we are looking forward to work on some simple word problem next week, before we moved on to Number Bonds.

Our Objectives for Number 1 to 10 were as followed:
1. Counting up to 10, forward and backward.
2. Count in twos up to 10.
3. Reading and writing numbers up to 10.
4. Comparing number up to 10.
5. Understanding the concept of "greater than", "bigger than", "more than" "less than" and "smaller than".
6. Understanding the concept of "just before", "between" and "just after".

It was a fun time for us to review, revisit and revise Number 1 to 10. And I am glad that Kai has mastered the spelling for Number 1 to 10.

Being a Detective (Solving Number Patterns)

For the past few languages, we have been revisiting "Number 1 to 10" and completed our recap and revision. And today, I was able to left Kai alone to complete the worksheets in a revision book that a friend, May, has given me when we were in Singapore for Kai. He was able to complete all the work alone while I prepare ingredients for dinner.

He loves working on Number Patterns which I did not instruct him to do, nevertheless, he has done them without my supervision and manage them well.

The first part of the activity was to count the pictures, write in numerals and words, then match the number to the words and after that it was number patterns. I was glad that he was able to sit quietly alone thinking and working on it.

We look forward to complete all the activity for this topic and hope to move on to Number Bonding middle or late next week.

Working on numbers

As Kai has decided to revisit numbers and to learn the spelling of the numbers. I give him spelling today regarding number 1 to 10, using the wordsheet and we had a little game together spelling out the words.

And we had fun in the car tonight, going with Daddy to pump petrol since it is the lowest petrol price on Tuesday and with our grocery receipt from the supermarket, we were entitled to another 4cents discount from the price per litre of petrol.

We substituted words from leapfrog about the supermarket and use it at the petrol kisok, Kai had a good time singing and laughing. And a bright idea came from Kai to count backward from 100, each of us took turn to shout out the number till our turn at the pump as the queue was very long.

And it was fun using Maths in our daily activity.

Revisiting and learning the spelling again...

Kai decided to revisit number 1 to 20 and to learn the spelling for number 1 to 10 again before we moved on to revisit number bonds.

And he counted number 1 to 100 by himself and told me, "I am ready for Maths now, let's do it."

So we started looking through the spelling of number from 1 to 10, and give him a couple of worksheets to complete, he was supposed to write the word next to each number by memory and he was pretty good. And he worked on a couple more on number patterns and practised on counting backward. We have fun pretending that a rocket was taking off.

He has decided that tomorrow I could test him on Maths Spelling from number 1 to 10 and followed by English Spelling.

Maths Spelling
1 = One
2 = Two
3 = Three
4 = Four
5 = Five
6 = Six
7 = Seven
8 = Eight
9 = Nine
10 = Ten

We love counting and more counting...

Rainy today, we could not go out for our usual walk so we sat near the window facing the nature reserve and looked at the birds flying around the reserve. And we started a counting game, we each pick a species and start counting the number that are there.

We have fun counting and after that we start our lesson looking at number pattern. counting backward and forward.

Here's some examples of what we have done,

20, 19, 18, 17, ____, ____, 14, 13, 12, 11

6, 7, 8, 9, ____. 11, 12, 13, ______

2, 4, _____, 8, _____, 12, 14

We are hoping to look at more patterns tomorrow.

Counting and more counting

We are revisiting topics that we have learnt and making sure that Kai remembers them. After all the relocating, in order not to add extra stress to Kai.

We are going back to the basic again, working on numbers 1 to 20 and learn to write them in words. Kai is about to work on number patterns, counting from 1 to 20 as well as counting backward.

We have been looking at,
a)What number comes before xx?
b) What number comes after xx?
c) What number is between xx and yy?
d) What number is xx more than yy?
e)What number is xx less than yy?

Kai enjoys what we are doing, revisiting and revising the concepts. After this week, we are going to revisit number bonds and working on number bonds concept.