Hi again! Welcome to the November edition of math tips:
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1. Math Mammoth news
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2. Looking back: Ten years agoHere are some cute math moments from 10 years ago... from my then-preschooler's life. (She was 3 back then; now she's about to turn 14. Boy, time goes fast!)
(Turning back the clock now to my old post...)
I've been doing math lessons with my 3-year old using the 100-bead abacus. Usually we do a few problems where she tells me a two-digit number to make, and I tell her a number to make, back and forth. Today she asked me to make 51, and I asked her to make 68. These went smoothly since she's getting pretty good at this now. Then we did a few "more than" problems. I said, "Let's say your sister has 5 cookies and you have one more than her. How many do you have?" This is a new concept to her, so we need to do it slowly and carefully with the abacus: first make her sister's cookies, then let her have the same amount, then give her one more. Then we did a few subtraction problems such as 7 − 4. She moved 7 beads, then "took away", or moved the other way, 4 beads. How many were left? 3 beads. I also showed her the subtraction 50 − 10 = 40. She started working on her own problem, "Let's do 9 − ..." and while she was thinking, I quickly proposed "... minus nine". Nine minus nine. Well, she moved nine beads (to make the number nine), then moved the beads the other direction, counting them one by one, and was left with none... and what a SURPRISE it was to her! She had to start giggling! I immediately showed her another one, 4 − 4. She did 10 − 10 herself. And then I showed her 100 − 100, which made the greatest giggles of all! 😅 It was just so cute I had to share. 😊 Plus, now you know several ways how to teach math concepts with the abacus.😄 |
3. Concept of division & abacus
Continuing on the topic of abacus, I've posted a new article on the site:
The concept of division, and how to use a 100-bead abacus to teach it This should be useful for 2nd and 3rd grade, and in particular, if you already own a 100-bead abacus. Of course you can also use small objects like beads to teach the concepts presented. |
4. Worksheets for the order of operations
Someone just requested practice problems for the order of operations. The student is using MM 6 but since they didn't use Math Mammoth last year, the order of operations lesson is a bit of a stumbling block; thus a need for easier problems than present in MM6.
Here's a worksheet generator I created it quite a few years ago for the order of operatoions. Besides being able to generate worksheets with your specifications, you will also find quite a few pre-made worksheets for different levels of difficulty: Worksheets for the order of operations |
5. A perfect parent is...I won't post the photo here because of copyright, but go see this post on Facebook:A perfect parent is... |
6. A word problem — no question!?!?Here's a video lesson with a strange word problem (with Mathy and Giganto, the mammoths), because it's actually lacking the question! But that gives the KIDS a chance to think WHAT could be asked? What can we solve or find out based on this info? What question can you make up? It's open-ended, in that sense! Mathy my mascot is a bit goofy and he makes this question, "When will we go camping?" 😀 Seriously though, I show several example questions, and we solve some of them, but you can still come up with many more not shown in the video. 😃 These word problems are best suited for 2nd and 3rd grade math, or even 4th grade if the child struggles with word problems. Thanks for reading!  Feel free to forward this issue to a friend/colleague! Subscribe here. Till next time, Maria Miller 
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