Living Math – Winter Fun

Posted by Cindy on February 4, 2008

After the last couple of living math posts, I promised to share some of our non-textbook lessons. Here are some of the fun things we’ve been doing/have planned to do this winter on our living math days. My hope is to encourage you that….

1.) Living math really is thoughtful, meaningful math.

2.) Living math isn’t hard to implement at all.

Here are a few of our January/February activities with links…

This Grab the Candy Game allows the kids to practice coordinate graphing and record keeping. Valentine Battleship is another version of a coordinate graphing game.

How Many Different Ways Can You Make the Word Snow? is a quick activity to encourage problem solving and critical thinking. This Heart Paths sheet is similar, but requires an extra “rule” to make the kiddos think a bit harder.

These Candy Heart Patterns are a little harder than they first seem. I gave these to my 5th grader as “fun filler” and she realized half-way through that she hadn’t thought the pattern through completely!

Glyphs are pictures children make based on a legend or key of codes. Not only does it reinforce problem solving, critical thinking and organization skills, but mapping as well. Here’s a link to the Snowman Glyph activity we used.

These Symmetrical Heart Masks reinforced the concept of symmetry, as well as creativity.

This President’s Day activity is going to require charting and creating a graph.

Even this worksheet of Valentine Word Problems is a fun, seasonal way to change the pace from a textbook.

There are a few more activities we’ve done or have planned to do, but I’ll let you find them for yourself at MathWire – an awesome site for living math ideas!

When the activities are quick, I’ll do several in one day.

As for living literature, we’ve checked out this series of books from the library to go along with our Medieval Unit.

Learn more about adding living math to your homeschool with Loving Living Math!