Weekly Wrap Up 28: Math with Fred and a Preschool Activity Bag

The picture above is my daughter doing some of her math work. We use Right Start for our math program. It's an amazing program. I love how visual and tactile it is. There is lots of manipulatives to help reinforce concepts, along with a heavy emphasis on how to use strategies to problem solve. There are some fantastic games that help math facts to stick way better then the typical flash cards. I think if I had learned math this way, I would have been able to learn these concepts in a solid way. Right Start discourages finger counting and features a special abacus grouped into fives and tens. This helps the child to visualize numbers and sequences in groups.

My son finds math challenging. He has a difficult time seeing math in every day life and has poor recall skills for math as well. Right Start has helped him a lot but I find he needs a break sometimes. We will take a break from typical seat work to do the Right Start Games or some books that are on math but are just good reads and do not feel intimidating. We will use books like Usborne's Math Dictionary or Sir Cumference Series, to give his brain a little bit of rest. He's still doing math but it's not intensive.

We were very excited this week about what we did. I had heard of these really neat math books called: Life of Fred Math that helps children put math into the real world. When I initially heard about them they only had the higher levels but a good friend of mine told me last week that they finally had the elementary level. I was very excited because I thought he would enjoy them! She had the first one and let me burrow it. It's proven to be a refreshing change from seat work and what not. We're working through Life of Fred: Apples. It's pretty basic but that's okay, it gave him some confidence because he was able to do them so quickly. The stories are funny and illustrates how much math is an every day part of Fred's life. We laughed and had fun and I saw some things click for him. :) It was really neat. I'll be getting a couple more books in the series and we will do them for breaks now and again along with our Right Start program.

Here's my little one doing level A of the Right Start Math Program. She thinks it's fantastic doing math like the other two. :)
I like to have my little one work on some Preschool Activity Bags while the other two are doing some seat work. The activity bag she is doing below is a matching one. She is matching the square colours that form a pattern on the card. The cards have cloured dots the same colour as the squares. She loves this one. Please see my post regarding The Preschool Activity Bag Swap if you are interested in how I did these bags.

It was a great week! We had lots of fun with school work, a five hour long play date with great friends, my daughter won 2nd place for crazy hat night at her girls club and we celebrated my son's 9th birthday! I can't believe he is 9, my little man is growing up. :)v


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