You Can Count on Cohen

Cohen hard at work counting (one to one).  I usually have an independent quiet activity set up in the classroom the night before.  After breakfast Cohen goes directly to the classroom and gets started.   

Way back in my early years of teaching I was given the amazing opportunity to train 19 schools on effective early math strategies.  I was really the one being trained.  I learned more about teaching math than most teachers get in years.  What a grateful heart I have because of this opportunity.  Most of the math stuff I use for our home school will come from this training.

One of the most important numbers children need to understand is 5.  Later on as they begin to use larger numbers to add and subtract, the numbers 5 and 10 will come in very handy.  Here is an activity that helps children grasp the concept of 5.

We did this together on our Wallies Chalkboard

We wanted to read a story about mittens but I forgot. (It happens all the time.)  We took this activity from one of the lessons in my training book.

Pose the problem:  Grandmother Sally needs to sew gloves.  She only has two colours.  How many different gloves can she make?

We started off by drawing one glove at a time on the board.  I invited my son to colour in the fingers a particular colour and then asked how many would the other colour be.  I explained that there are different ways to make 5.  

We moved to our desk and used a sheet with a hand print on it and continued with the same discussion.  I placed all the gloves in front of him and asked what he noticed.  He explained that some of the gloves were the same.  We talked about how they were the same and how they were different.  (Example: Cohen said the green and the red were the same numbers just different colours.)  This reflection time is so important.  Most of the learning is retrieved here.  

When we were done our discussion Cohen cut out the gloves.  We made it into a book.  I encouraged Cohen to use words, numbers and pictures while were working on this activity.  This helps to ensure understanding and represents a complete way of answering a question.  We continued to talk about the different ways we made 5.  Then we went back to the problem and answered the question. 

 

To continue our discussion on 5 we are going to try this bead in a bag activity I found at The Activity Mom. I'll let you know how it goes.