Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Never too young to start algebra!

Especially when you have materials! :)

I have these simple algebra tiles. Don't know what the company is who made them. In any case, I had pulled them out to show something to "Bob". They were still on the table while eating lunch, and just to see, I pulled out a bar representing x and told my 5yo niece that it was x, even though it doesn't look like x, we call it x. Then I took out one of the little red squares and told her it was plus 1. I put it next to the x and told her that we now have x + 1. I took a bite to eat and she asked to do more!

I grabbed another red square and told her now we had x + 2. Then I added another one, and she knew it was x + 3. We did more squares, added more x's and even started taking away x's and squares. She LOVES it!

I'm going to miss her when she goes off to public school full-day kindergarten in the fall. She'll be coming to me after school, so maybe we'll be able to still do these kinds of things. She's so capable and it's such a joy to see her delight in doing these kinds of things.

1 comment:

Kyle Sadler said...

Thank you so much for your link information. I am new to Montessori and want to use it with my children. This is extremely helpful.