Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Awesome Abacus


We've been into counting a lot in our house. Jared loves counting everything he can get his hands on. It's very, very interesting and exciting to watch your kids from birth develop their own learning styles. You do really appreciate how unique and individual every child is and that must be respected.

As I've said, Jared loves to count, but for him in mostly involves touching and manipulating things. Alexa loves anything to do with the computer. She is very adept for four year old. She loves when I find new computer games, video or hands-on computer activities for her to do. A few week ago, I showed her a site that basically was a set of math flash cards. You simply punched in the correct answer, and the computer tallies up your score at the end. I didn't expect her to really like it, and she lost interest in a few minutes.

However, a few weeks later she asked me to put on the site for her again. This time I thought she might like to use the abacus, too. It really was a nice way for her and Jared to play together on something. She'd read the numbers aloud to be counted together and he'd push the correct number of beads. They did this for quite a while that morning, and have not asked to do it since. I wonder where their counting interests will take them next?

2 comments:

Lynn B said...

I recently did a free trial for the kids at www.dreambox.com - it's a math site for K-3rd. It tailors itself to their level and teaches concepts in very creative, fun ways which they don't even realize! My oldest thrives on computer-based learning and he loved it! Actually they both did. I let them go math-crazy for the 2 weeks, hours a day if they wanted to :) It is a great site and they learned a lot, plus I learned even more about my kids and how they learn. I didn't pay for a subscription but I probably will after we all take a little break.

Chris said...

Thanks so much for sharing this resource. My daughter loves, loves, loves computer-based learning, so I will definitly go there to check it out.