I saw these cool math games at a Montessori classroom.
Mystery Number
Every day there is a new random amount of manipulatives placed in a treasure chest that children count together as a class. This reinforces counting.
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Memory Game
There are two boxes: one with "jewels" or any eye-catching manipulatives and another box of folded pieces of paper with numerals. The directress used numeral stickers and laminated them, but that's optional.
You place the box of jewels in any place in the room where it's easily accessible and not interfering with anyone else's work. Then you pick up one of the folded pieces of paper with a numeral on it and then leave the piece of paper on a mat and then go bring that amount of jewels to the mat. The object of the game is to "remember" the number. So, for example, if I picked up a card with the number two, I would leave the card in the mat and have to remember to bring two jewels. The directress shared that the kids were always puzzled when they got the number zero. She let them just go to the box of jewels and run their fingers around the jewels and pretend to carry the invisible zero back to the mat.
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Adding Game
Each child receives a strip of numbers that has these numbers in this order:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
and two customized dice that is made from blank dice. In each blank die, you leave one face empty and the other faces one dot, two dots, three dots, four dots, five dots respectively. The object of the game is to roll the two dice, count them, and cross out the number. I suppose you could do this with two people and see who crosses out the number first or with a timer, or just do it by yourself at your sweet pace. For older kids, you could customize the dice to have larger numbers and make a strip accordingly. I just discovered that there's a similar game to this.
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Math Sets
The set up includes a set of number cards with numerals, manipulatives to match the numbers, and rings.
Basically, this is a self-correcting counters and cards game except you need to put the manipulatives inside the rings to show that it's a set. So for the number one, you would only have one type of manipulative, say a penguin. For two, you might have two polar bears, and so on. For three, you might have three seals. If you made a mistake, it would be obvious because the amount of manipulatives would not match the number on the card. This directress likes to shake up things to have the number one sometimes really big and sometimes very small and vice versa for the other numbers. That way the child can realize that despite the size, the quantity, say the number one, doesn't change regardless if it's big or small.
6 comments:
Ah, math games... how can I resist?
For the memory game, 2nd paragraph: "...bring them many amount of jewels to the mat." Also, "...shared that it the kids were always puzzled..."
For the adding game, if you leave one face empty and the other faces 1, 2, 3, and 4 on a six-sided die, do you also leave the sixth side empty as well?
For the math sets, coming from a non-Montessori background, I don't quite see all that's happening here (especially with the cards in relation to what's in the rings), but I just found the use of the word "manipulatives" to be amusingly sinister overall.
Doh! I forgot that the die had six sides. I tried to add more explanations to clarify the rings. I really should be cleaning the house but blogging is so much more fun. Sigh.
The adding game sounds interesting, and thanks for clarifying on the comments board about the number of sides.
Cool, thanks for the clarification!
As for cleaning house -- not that I'm one to speak or anything -- but some helpful strategies are to attack problem areas (messy rooms, drawers, etc.) for a set number of minutes at a time/each day, so one-to-10-minute sessions, depending on what works best for you. Steady progress and all that. Another tip is to avoid touching items more than once by always placing things you touch into their proper places the first time you deal with them (whether it's popular toys or new "snail" mail) to keep busy areas and junk piles clear.
I really oughtta take these tips more to heart myself (esp. in getting rid of all that stuff I tend to squirrel away), but most mail, bills, and financial bookkeeping gets taken care of pretty quickly following this mindset.
Dan,
Did you assume that I meant to label the die faces with dots or numbers? Cringe. I wasn't that clear. Anyway, I made the changes today.
I assumed from the blank-dice link that the only labeling would be occurring at the beginning (of each play session, if larger numbers are desired later) to set up summed totals of 0 to 10, with any blank values on the dice adding 0 to the sum total. Then even the 0 value can be crossed off each child's number strip.
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