Archive for the ‘critical / creative thinking’ Category

 

Learning the Language of Math with “What Number Am I?” riddles

May 20th, 2010Posted by Risa Kawchuk

One of Daegan’s favourite sort of question for our ‘Problem of the Day’ is what I call a “What Number Am I?’” riddle. Here’s some that we’ve done in the past few weeks: All three of my digits are the same. The sum of my digits is 6. I am a 2-digit even number. I [...]

Dr. Dooriddles

April 26th, 2010Posted by Risa Kawchuk

In a previous post I mentioned one of the series of workbooks Daegan has enjoyed the most: Dr. Dooriddles. Here’s a typical riddle from these books, level A2 (grades K-2): I’m found inside pillows, I help keep birds dry; I’m soft to the touch, Birds need me to fly. What am I?____________________________ (answer: feathers) We’ve [...]

More Math Fun With Problem of the Day

April 20th, 2010Posted by Risa Kawchuk

Our addition of a “problem of the day” question to our math routine continues to go very well. We had a super discussion about today’s question—the version Daegan created to try to stump Mom required some careful thinking and strategy! Here’s what I put on the board for him, which he immediately took a logical [...]

Critical / Creative Thinking Resources

April 14th, 2010Posted by Risa Kawchuk

I’ve mentioned before that Daegan loves puzzles and riddles of all kinds—from Dr. Dooriddles (review forthcoming!) in language arts to kakuro and  Math Analogies to chemistry / geography puzzles. They make learning more fun! Both Jim and I were the same way as kids, and as adults we’ve come to believe even more in the [...]

Grandfather’s Shape Story: Tangram Play!

April 6th, 2010Posted by Risa Kawchuk

Yesterday the boys and I read the book Grandfather’s Shape Story (Canada) (US) by Brian Sargent, one of the Rookie Read About Math series. In the book, a grandfather tells his granddaughter a story about a man and a special (magical?) rooster, and uses tangram blocks to make pictures to compliment the story as he goes [...]

Math Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!

March 24th, 2010Posted by Risa Kawchuk

Over the last while I’ve been feeling like something isn’t quite working in our math curriculum. While we do lots of fun activities in math, we’ve been using Math-U-See as a spine in this area, along with a few other workbooks from the Critical Thinking company. While Daegan LOVED Math-U-See Primer last year, and booted [...]

Kakuro Puzzles: Math Facts Practice

March 4th, 2010Posted by Risa Kawchuk

While not as popular as it’s cousin sudoku at present, kakuro puzzles have been around for years. They are also known by the name “cross sums”, as they are a mathematical version of the crossword puzzle. I remember enjoying them as a kid—and more complicated ones even now as an adult—and thought I’d give it [...]

Popsicle Stick Creativity Game

February 19th, 2010Posted by Risa Kawchuk

We played a couple games with popsicle (craft) sticks last night. I got the first game idea from a blog post about making shapes (triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, etc.) using sticks, but added a little twist of my own to make the game broader. I began giving each boy 1 stick. “What can you make?” [...]

Fun and Games Weekend

February 7th, 2010Posted by Risa Kawchuk

We had a pretty good weekend. My parents were in town for a conference/meeting, and my Dad came for a visit on Saturday afternoon. It had been a while since he’d seen the boys, so it was nice to catch up. Earlier on Saturday the boys each had their drama class as well. This morning [...]

Math Analogies

January 13th, 2010Posted by Risa Kawchuk

Daegan uses Math U See as the core, or ‘spine’ of his math learning, and we use other books and materials, flashcards, play games, he helps cook, etc. Today we started a new resource, in keeping with my focus on thinking skills: _Math Analogies_ beginner workbook, from the Critical Thinking Company: It was a huge [...]