Math Monday: Division with Place Value Blocks

Peanut is getting bogged down in division. She often has this problem with a new concept in math, or when using an old concept in a new way. I have learned that she needs to go into it gently, with me alongside, and then she will eventually get it. She does not do well with the "sink or swim" approach. It probably works with some kids, but not her.

We got out the old place value blocks this past week, and we are doing the beginning steps of long division with the blocks. This was tricky for me to figure out but we've got it for now. We use the dry erase board and work the problem out as we use the blocks for a concrete example of the problem. Currently, we are dividing by 2's, 3's, 4's, and 5's. It might get trickier this week as we step up to the larger single digits.

I am going to try to get up a "how-to" post about this during the week.

Some Freebies I Made - Price Cards for a Money Game

These are just some little cards I made and thought I would share. They are small cards you can print off to play a game while learning about money. They have drawings of the item and a made-up price on them. The first sheet is prices under $1, and the second sheet is prices from $1 to $10.

We use Singapore Math 2B and this was one of the suggestions in the Instructor's Guide, but it would work for any curriculum. You could laminate them, but I didn't. I did print them off on cardstock. If you want, you can just set up to print them black and white, and they will still look okay.

There are several things you can do with them. The child can go "shopping" and add up his total cost. Or you can go shopping, buy one thing, and the child can make change for you. Just use your imagination. We have had fun with them.

When we play money games, etc. here is what we do: I have a change bowl where I empty out my change and "steal" my husband's change off the bathroom counter. (He really doesn't mind!) We use the real change from the bowl, but I did print out some play paper money from the Internet, because I never have enough small bills in my purse ready to go. We got our play money here, but there are lots of places to get it.

*Just as an aside, I noticed the other day while looking in an educational supply catalog, they were selling big containers of plastic coins for classroom use. The funny thing was, the pennies cost about 2 cents each! I thought that was so funny. I can see why in a classroom, you would want to use plastic coins, but it just struck me funny.