Parenting
Pages
Categories
Archives
Blogroll and Other Sites
This is pretty cool site, http://homeschoolmath.blogspot.com/. Perfect for both traditional homeschooling or unschooling families. The site has varied and interesting math problems , worksheets and you can also send in a math problem.
Well worth the look!
Posted by Lisa - Unschooling Mom as Math Skills and Homeschool Math Sites at 12:14 PM EDT
At risk of repeating myself, we recently moved.. during the unpacking I came across some stuff we haven’t seen in while. One of things was a great big box of cuisenaire rods. If you don’t know what they are- they are wooden (or plastic) rods of varying colours and lengths that help with math skills and are used as math manipulatives and used with the popular Miquon math . They are also used to teach parts of the language but that’s another post…
My daughter didn’t have to much interest in them but both she ( 10 years) and my son (4 years) have been playing with them for almost 2 days straight… It is intersting to see how they both come at it differently. My sone has spent HOURS trying to exactly math the pattern on the box they came in… my daughter is very interested in oderring them and coming up with ways to group
them.
What can you do with these colored wooden rods?
A few years ago I had trouble finding things related to cuisenaire rods didnt cost a fortune or involve lots of book work. So I am compiling a list of GOOD cuisenaire rod sites/links and ideas. If you have one- please share!
Article on ways to use cuisenaire rods to explain verb tense : http://assoc.orange.fr/une.education.pour.demain/articlesrrr/sw/vts.htm Be patient- it may hurt your head a little but worth the effort 
This is kind of cool : http://cdsearch.britannica.com/lm/mathclub/activities/school_3/product.html, online game using the rods to add and subtract, featuring the female magician ( points for that alone! ) “Gordalina” .
Some other ideas:
Counting Pictures. Student makes a picture out of rods. It can even be a 3-D construction (build a house, fence, etc). When he’s finished, he sells it back to me for 10-rods. i.e., he gives me a 6 and a 4, and I give him a 10-rod. When he has all the 10-rods, he sells them back to me for a 100-board (a 10cm x 10cm piece of cardboard works fine). When he has sold everything back to me, we count how much his picture was worth. i.e., he may have three 100-boards, four 10-rods, and a 2-rod and 3-rod. Therefore his picture was worth 345 units. We write that number down to reinforce how place value works. Benefits: get familiar with the rod numbers, learn what adds up to 10, understand place value principles, have fun building pictures.
Mystery Tube. Cut a 3×5 card to 10 cm long, roll it into a tube, and tape it so it’s wide enough for a 10-rod to slide through easily. You slide two rods which add up to 10 into the mystery tube. When you show the student one open end of the tube, she figures out what the hidden mystery rod is. i.e., student sees that one end has a 6-rod, so the mystery rod must be a 4. Benefits: what adds up to 10, addition and subtraction principles. Of course, you can use mystery tubes of different lengths, and you could even slide three rods into a longer tube, let the student see both ends, and have her identify the middle rod.
How Much is a Million? A thousand is 10 x 10 x 10. So if you use cardstock to make a block (or buy one) that is 10 cm on a side, that’s equal to a thousand one-rods. Likewise, a million is 100 x 100 x 100. So in a corner of a room, measure 100 cm (ten 10-rods) in each direction to form an imaginary cube. That’s the volume of a million one-rods. It’s ROUGHLY the size of a card table. So how big would a BILLION one-rods be?
Excellent pre-miquon Cuisinenaire Rod resource : Cuisenaire Discovery Booklet & Cards. You can download the Acrobat (.pdf) files here: Booklet, Cards, and print your own copy. If you don’t have a colour printer, use this link for B&W Cards and get out your pencil crayons.
however you spell them: cuisinare rods- cuisenaire rods - quisonare rods (!) they are a great tool/toy !
White rod = 1 cm.
Red rod = 2 cm.
Light green rod = 3 cm.
Lavender rod = 4 cm.
Yellow rod = 5 cm.
Dark green rod = 6 cm.
Black rod = 7 cm.
Brown rod = 8 cm.
Blue rod = 9 cm.
Orange rod = 10 cm.
Do you have an idea or use for cuisenaire rods? Is there a site you would recommend? Please let us know! Just post in the comments section.
Posted by Lisa - Unschooling Mom as Fun Activities for Kids, Math Skills and Homeschool Math Sites at 9:03 PM EDT
Noun 1. logical thinking - thinking that is coherent and logical
According to Dr. Karl Albrecht logical thinking is not a magical process or a matter of genetic endowment, but a learned mental process. It is the process in which one uses reasoning consistently to come to a conclusion. Problems or situations that involve logical thinking call for structure, for relationships between facts, and for chains of reasoning that “make sense.”
A popular game that many homeschoolers own the help develop logical thinking is River Crossing also I believe from the same company, Rush Hour
Online Logical Thinking Puzzles for kids can be found here: http://www.edhelper.com/logic_puzzles.htm . You can also print logical thinking puzzles there as well.
This site, http://www.aimsedu.org/PUZZLE/categories/logical.html is cumbersome to navigate, but has some nice puzzles and riddles also worksheets to print out available for free.
More logical thinking puzzles on this site : http://www.puzzlechoice.com/pc/Logics_Menux.html
Lateral and Logical Thinking Riddles/Puzzles : http://www.ram.org/ramblings/other/lateral_questions.html
Fun Books Promoting Logical Thinking for Kids
This is quite good:
The Philosophers’ Club by Christopher Phillips is an an introduction to Socratic thought and filled with fun games and riddles another good one, Philosophy for Kids : 40 Fun Questions That Help You Wonder … About Everything!
Posted by Lisa - Unschooling Mom as Board Games and Board Game Reviews and Recommendations, Math Skills and Homeschool Math Sites at 2:30 PM EDT
Cam across this - teaches basic computer programming in a very easy to understand way ( good for ages 12+ ).
The HLA (High Level Assembly) language was developed as a tool to help teach assembly language programming and machine organization to University students at the University of California, Riverside. The basic idea was to teach students assembly language programming by leveraging their knowledge of high level languages like C/C++ and Pascal/Delphi. At the same time, HLA was designed to allow advanced assembly language programmers write more readable and more powerful assembly language code.
HLA was originally conceived as a tool to teach assembly language programming. Some people seem to be confused by the phrase “High Level Assembler.” They seem to think that if you learn assembly language programming with HLA you’re not really learning “real assembly language.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. HLA is “real” assembly language, just made easier for beginners so they can learn the language faster than ever before! Anything you can do with a traditional assembler can be done with HLA; HLA just happens to do a lot more than traditional assemblers!
Learn HLA: http://docs.google.com/View?docID=d674v6b_21hfm8nm&revision=_latest
Posted by Lisa - Unschooling Mom as General Homeschool and Unschooling, Math Skills and Homeschool Math Sites at 12:19 PM EDT
Neat little blog I discovered today- a homeschool mom has created a blog devoted entirely to math and math puzzles, problems for all ages.
You will find Egyptian math problems, puzzles and other neat stuff. This is NOT your typical dry math problems site.
Well worth the visit!
http://letsplaymath.wordpress.com/
Posted by Lisa - Unschooling Mom as Math Skills and Homeschool Math Sites at 9:55 AM EDT
