Long Division

This activity was inspired by Montessori Math. The link is to the left of the blog. I took a bunch of her Easter Egg Hunt candy, along with 4 stuffed animal friends and 4 sheets of paper labeled 1, 10, 100, and 1000. We set up the friends in a circle and told them we were going to give them equal amounts of candy. Then I had her count out 4 candy pieces and put them on the units paper (the one labeled 1), 8 pieces on the tens paper, 4 pieces on the hundreds paper, and 8 pieces on the thousands paper. We said, "We have eight thousand four hundred and eighty-four pieces of candy to give away!" Then we "divided" the candy between the 4 friends (so, in big person terms, 8,484 divided by 4). From the thousands paper, we gave 1 candy piece to the first friend, 1 to the second, etc., until each of them had 2 pieces of candy for their "thousands place." Then we did the same with the pieces in the hundreds place, tens place, and units place. When all the candy was divided, we said, "Each friend gets two thousand one hundred and twenty-one pieces of candy." Then they gobbled it all up. She was like, "Again! Again!" It is now one of her favorite games.

Subtracting Daffodils

To work on subtraction, I printed out 6 little pictures of daffodils. Then I made up a little rhyme, and my daughter loves it -

Six little daffodils up on a hill
Along came Jack and along came Jill
They took [insert number] daffodil(s) off that hill,
But don't worry! There are [insert number] more still.

Counting Syllables

Today we played the syllable game. She or I would pick a word, and then we would clap as we said each "syllable" (new word for her). How many times did we clap? we would ask, and she or I would answer. It was a great game, because it was a lot of fun to her, it reinforced counting skills AND memory skills - she had to remember the sound of the clapping to know how many syllables were in the word. And she learned what a syllable is.