week eight: maths, maths, maths

I know, you're looking at the title thinking, 'Uhm, it's MATH. There's no S at the end.' I had a British person explain it to me this way once, he said, 'is there just ONE kind of math? No, there's geometry and calculus and trigonometry and algebra, so why, when we [meaning you Americans] say mathematicS [implying more than one discipline within the whole] do [you Americans] shorten it to math. It's not one thing. It's many things, and so saying math to talk about a bunch of things within a whole isn't proper grammar.' 

I suppose now it is implied and culturally accepted Standard American English, but I took his point. 

It was a big math week at school. First we had Family Math Night on Tuesday 
[We moved tutoring to accommodate Math Night and I learned Hard Lesson Number One: Change nothing. 3 out of 20 some odd kids showed up. Never changing tutoring night again.]

Family Math Night. 

  

Here. Try this. Does it work from there? Does it work from over there?

These foamy footballs just don't have a good spin...

   

'Wait! Come back! You need this!'

 

'Where have you been?!' [yes, my cat is channeling Molly Weasley]

 And then, because I had been away at school for 12 hours, my thoroughly disgruntled cat left her [read:my] room to find me.

More MATHS!!! 

Doubles facts with crayons and BRIO trains. 

 

 

 I've been working with a little firstie who is behind in maths skills. We have the snap together math cubes, but the little guy isn't ready for big big numbers, and these are easier for his little hands to handle. Eventually we will get to bigger numbers where we will have to use them but he's so low, 3+3 equals 5 and 4+4 equals 7. There are trains that go through the community and several kids are wild about them, so I pulled the trains out of the attic and started using them as manipulatives. On Friday I got out the track and set up the bridge so the train was evenly balanced and he watched as the equal parts fell down one side of the bridge or the other. 

 Hey, they stick together like the cubes. They're way more fun than the cubes...

 But numbers past 8 are going to be a problem; I only have 9 cars... Anyone know of an inexpensive source for magnetic wooden train cars? Its not like you can find them at Goodwill...

This might be a little cheezy, but we have a lone bulletin board and I've been trying to figure out something to do with it - yes, I could have gone maths, but I'm not maths oriented and we already do so much reading recovery. When it's done it will say 'TRAVEL - with books!' and there will be the quote from Mason Cooley that says 'Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.' When I got a chance here and there, I'd print one or two off to the printer and then I ran them through the laminator. Our laminator is on all day  - this is probably the best thing ever. Okay, maybe not the best thing ever, but it's the little things. [did you know you can tour Paris from Madeline and Hugo Cabaret's perspectives? Someone has actually google mapped it out!] So, when I have a chance, I'm going to get that quote printed out, and probably punch out the letters By Book! with the fancy letter puncher at school.