Parent Lesson Night

I love, love, love parent lesson night at school.  The kids come home and talk about "the bank game" and "checkerboard" and I love getting to see those and all the other works I don't understand.  I also really love how montessori teaches math so I truly enjoy it when the kids teach me math works. We started in Kayden's class.  She had been prepared to show me the bank game.  It is a work that teaches dynamic addition of 4 digit numbers.

After gathering her supplies at the rug, she sets out all the numbers.

Waiting patiently for Mrs. Wilcox (love her) to write her problem for her.  The problem will be written with the same color pattern as the cards Kayden laid out.

She will pull the cards that she needs to form each number and then go to the "bank" to get her manipulatives.  The big block is the thousands, the flat sheet is the hundreds, and then there are the 10 bars and the unit bead in the bowl.

Once she gets all the manipulatives for each number, she adds them together.  When she has to carry a number, she physically takes the beads over to the bank and changes out the 10 units for a 10 bar.  I just love the way that it works to reinforce all those math concepts.  I love the way the manipulatives really help them "see" and "feel" that 1000 is so much bigger than 1.

Next up, the elementary building!  Keeley chose to show me the checkerboard.  She uses it multiply a 4 digit number by a single number.  

Here she is laying out all the bead bars and the numbers.

Writing her problem in the journal.

Mommy got a turn!

I had to lay out all the bars according to my multiplier and multiplicand.

 Then I had to exchange out to figure out how many I had.  Keeley had to help me because I got confused!

My finished product! I was very proud of myself!