Originally Posted by La Texican
She might love the supermind magnetic game if she likes the tanagrams.
What's wrong with plain stencils and pencils? It can always turn into a straight edge and compass when she gets older. When she gets older she can have the book "building stars and polygons" but for now a sacred geometry coloringbook from Michaels is fine. I think kindergarten is a great year to start sorting and wrapping coins you bought from the bank. It's cheaper than the base ten sets because it didn't cost anything, you still have all the money.

Idk if i've a homeschoolers heart or if I'm a latent closet shopaholic who now has a childrens education to blame it on guilt free. This is new.

ROFL. Exactly.

I put together a "measurement" math center in a plastic storage box when my DD was about that age. Alas, she was the polar opposite, in that she LOATHED manipulatives of any kind and loved to read.

Anyway.
I think that most of the books in this series are a great deal of fun:

Shoebox Math Learning Centers

Unfortunately, they were also a LOT of work for me to set up for just my DD, who rapidly progressed right out of them... I just recall that there were a TON of activities in that one that didn't rely upon reading skills and seemed to be directly aimed at your child's specific interests. One was a series of shapes printed with grids that could be colored in... another involved skip counting with fun pictures to color, etc.

It tops out at about third grade, however.

Another idea: a 'beginner balance' (two-pan with a center fulcrum) and gram cubes (Nasco sells them in a big bucket-- they can be used like Unifix cubes or linked and used as Cuisinaire rods, too).

Our measurement box contained: a flexible cloth tape measure, a rain guage, a thermometer, the beginner balance and gram cubes, a stopwatch, paper and pens, and a variety of containers labeled with volumes. That's what I remember, anyway.



Wonder if this would be good?
Mega-Fun Card Game Math Gr 3-5 It's certainly inexpensive enough to be low-risk, anyway.

I'm sure that someone somewhere has probably already mentioned this one:
Mystery Pictures-- multiplication I know that "coloring" kids love those-- but anti-drill-n-kill kids may rapidly develop quite the aversion to them, too. (BTDT.)

There is also MathArt Grades 3-5, which is terrific for kids to explore concepts like place value and statistics via art projects.

My own DD loved stuff like this: Math Mysteries but they would definitely require a parent/teacher to be reading to the child if s/he can't yet read well. Still, they are quite clever and engaging, which is appealing to GT kids. (Think Cam Jansen meets Encyclopedia Brown meets Nancy Drew.)

Last edited by HowlerKarma; 02/15/11 04:37 PM.

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