Understanding Numbers

Last night Wander told me that a friend of ours is concerned about the math education that his daughter is receiving at school. Math is very important to Wander's friend. Over the summer he had worked with his daughter on math and he was pleased with her progress. However, after a few months in school, his daughter has apparently forgotten much of what they worked on during the summer.

I immediately thought of Liping Ma's book: "Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics." It is an amazing book that talks about the difference in how elementary math (arithmetic) is taught in China versus the United States. I was fortunate enough to find a copy of the book through the library so that I didn't have to buy it. The book helped me gain a better understanding of numbers and how there are many ways to look at arithmetic problems, many ways to take numbers apart and put them back together. I only read the first bit about addition and subtraction and was blown away by it. Even though I did well in math at school and had a mother who taught college math, I gained a better understanding of numbers from this book.

So, while Sparkle swats at pictures and plays counting games for math in school, I still want to work on her math skills at home. Math is her most difficult subject. We play a variety of math games, none of which are glamorous, but she still finds them fun. Here is a list of my current favorite math games:

- corners (add 2 numbers to make multiples of 5)
- go to the dump (using 2 numbers to make 10)
- on the number (adding several numbers to make a number from 11 to 20)
- on the number ten (adding and subtracting several single digit numbers to make 10)

From the outside these games look really boring. The cards have no pictures or dots, only numbers. There is no board. There are no tokens. All the addition/subtraction is mental and I don't allow counting. Yet Sparkle will happily play these games.