It's Math-U-See

As I have mentioned before, Josh is starting a new math program.  It is called Math-U-See and is right up his visual alley, so to speak.  As the name suggests, it is math you can actually see, hold, and touch with manipulatives.  We have backed him up quite a bit further than he might have needed to go in hopes of giving him a good running start into the more difficult operations.  These pictures show how they (Andrew is using this program too) are learning place value.  The green boxes represent units (or ones), the blue bars are tens, and the red squares are hundreds.  So the first picture shows 165.

Both Josh and Andrew are very much enjoying doing math this way.  There are other blocks that we use for addition that include color coded bars for 2-9 as well.  Won't they become dependent on the visuals, you ask?  I hope not.  The designer of this program assures they will not, since we always Build, Write AND Say each problem.  We take in as many senses as possible, even making up creative stories to help the material sink in.

 Because we are doing pretty easy stuff right now, it's hard to say how effective it will be in the long run, but I have a good feeling about it.  All I know for sure, is that they LOVE when it's time for math now.  Before, with Josh, love was the furthest thing from his mind when it came time for math.  Happy kids make for a happy teacher/Mama!