"'Education is the Science of Relations'; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of––
'Those first-born affinities,
That fit our new existence to existing things.'"

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education
with a quote from The Prelude by William Wordsworth

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Money rabbit trails

Yesterday, ds#2 had to "make change" for his MEP lesson. Not wanting to do this on paper, I took out our play plastic coins and a money puzzle in which half the pieces had priced items pictured on them.

I gave ds#2 money and asked him what to buy something and then figure out how much change he should get.

Ds#1 & ds#3 though that was great fun so I let them get out the large money kit and go shopping. I only asked that they make change rather than give exact amounts.

Interestingly, ds#1, who learned addition and subtraction with Math-U-See, wanted a dry erase board to figure out change from $1. Ds#2, learning addition and subtraction with MEP level 2, explained to him how to subtract 2 digit numbers from 100 mentally. Ds#1 picked right up on it, since he has been asked to do that for review at MEP level 3 as well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This would be a nice post to add to the next (after Jan 6th) edition of the CM Carnival. This is a great idea for living math!