School Day - New Math!

This weekend as I was preparing to present a new math lesson to Link, I realized that I needed to get Bumblebee going on math!  I used to have all kinds of things on the shelves - pink tower, brown stair, red rods, cylinder blocks - but I had to put them all up because Bumblebee was constantly making huge messes out of them.  But, he's ready to get presentations on these things, so I have to make room again!

Today I first attempted to give Link a presentation on the teens using the bead stair.  Right now he counts like this - 11,12,13,17,18,19,20.  He's very consistent, he always counts this way.  So I was trying to be very careful in this presentation so that he would learn it correctly.  After I presented 11, 12, and 13, he said "Can we stop this now?" 

So then I gave Bumblebee (who is 3 1/2) a presentation on the number rods.  He can already count pretty well to 10, don't ask me how.  This ended up being just the right difficulty for him.  He did not get it right the first time.  He had to move a few and fill in some spots, but he ended up getting it right in the end.  He was very enthusiastic and put it away when he was finished.

After that Link asked for a presentation on the number cards and counters.  I knew this would be an easy work for him, but he asked, which was great!  I wanted to use that time to talk about odd and even anyways, and it was good for Bumblebee to watch.   

Bumblebee was disappointed that he was not actually given a presentation and allowed to work with the counters.  I'm pretty sure he isn't quite ready.  He really, really wanted me to give him a presentation that involved beads.  So instead of the counters, I gave him a presentation on matching the bead stairs to number cards.  He did pretty well up to 3, but when he couldn't immediately tell which was 4 without counting, he started messing around.  Probably not ready for that one either.  Maybe counters would have been better after all :)

After that I could not convince Link to choose any more work as he was complaining about being hungry.  Bumblebee, on the other hand, chose to work with the geometric shapes for quite a while, building rockets I believe, but I was okay with that.  I went upstairs to make Link lunch and heard some bells ringing randomly as well.

That pretty much wrapped up our school "day" and only lasted about an hour.  After that my Aunt read probably every single letter book from the Sound Box Series.  I'll call that phonics for the day :)