Math U See Cake Recipe

Kelly’ granddaughter, Hailey is 4 yo and her favorite math activity is making a cake. While she isn’t officially in Primer she is well on her way. As you will see when you read her cake recipe, she already as some math mastery just from playing and talking to granny about it.

I asked her for the recipe.

Math-U-See Big Red Cake with Designer Frosting 

First you make the cake by stacking ALL the red ones on top of each other.

There are different ways to make the frosting and this is the method used for the design in the picture:

First you put as many blues (5’s) as possible around the outer edge. There will not be enough room to finish the edge in blue  so you will need to fill in with pink. Put the remaining blues on the inside top.

On the inside edge add 2 of the 2’s followed by 8 greens

At this point fill in with the rest of the pink  because it is important to use as many pink as possible before running out of room because a princess always uses pink.

There was a spot just right for a yellow. When asked what size would fit in there Hailey immediately said “Four”!!! Who hoo good job Hailey you have mastery! When you get to the lesson on solving for the unknown it will be a piece of cake for you!

Add 3 more 2’s and finish it off with 1 green.

Serves as 1 math lesson and a whole lot of fun.

Hailey sometimes call the blocks by color and other times by number.  Granny can be proud of how well she and Hailey are progressing in their maths!

Hailey will be checking in. So please leave her a comment.

Thanks

Sue

Math U See the Luker Man Way

When the older siblings are working on math the younger ones tend to naturally want to get involved. Such is the case with Luke and Hailey. When Hailey is making cakes and fences with the blocks Luke looks for window of opportunities to do a little Math U See too.

This is Lukes version:

First you put the dvd in the player. (Luke has mastered opening the player, putting in the dvd [sorta] and closing the lid.)

Then you get the blocks out… er dump the blocks out.

To get things exciting from the get go always go for favorite blocks (the units) first. The trick is to grab quick, run, and try to get them in your mouth before being stopped by an adult or your big sister. (Luke is pretty good at this but thankfully because units are the #1 choking hazard in the box, has not reached 3 second mastery. ) When units are unavailable the 2’s get pretty much the same response.

Under a VERY watchful eye 8’s, 9’s and 10’s seem to not cause such a stir and are better than nothing.

Hmm so what DO you do with a fist full of blocks ????

You can give them to pa pa….

Offer them to “Sugar” the dog to lick..

and/or lick them yourself… licking them after the dog is optional and can actually get almost as good of a reaction as units and 2’s

Please note: These photos and story was for the purpose of a fun post for the blog. We are not suggesting to start using the blocks with your 1 yo. Luke will be much older before he is given this much freedom with the blocks again. Math-U-See blocks are a choking hazard and not recommended for children under the age of 4.

Math-U-See question??

Ok, all you Math-U-See fans who ski.

Using Math-U-See language, how do you convert a Math-U-See user(or rep) into a Math-U-Ski user (rep)??

We are heading for the slopes tomorrow… we think we already have an answer but what is yours?

Sue

Greek Alphabet

This is a fun way to help your students learn the Greek alphabet!

Getting the blocks out in Special Education

One of our Special Ed customers once said, “It should be a state law that Math-U-See is used in every special Education classroom.”

Well, it is not yet a state law  . However, we now are not only researched based but have data to back it up. MUS_data

Math-U-See works best with small group tutoring or 1 on 1 instruction.

If you are working with a small class, individual student or just need another great tool for your math tool box  and are not yet using Math-U-See you may want to check it out.

Those of you who are using Math-U-See in your class please check in with us and let us know how you are doing. We would love to hear from/ support you.

Sue

Math-U-See Rep convention

Kelly and I just returned from the Math-U-See Rep Convention that was held last week in Colorado.  The annual convention is always a relaxing time where we all catch up on what is happening not only in the math world but how God is using Math-U-See to send Steve to encourage families internationally . Did you know Steve also has a blog??? Check it out at http://www.stevedemme.com/blog/

During the conference I tried real hard to avoid the camera.. but low and behold when I checked the Math-U-See blog this morning I discovered that I had been unsuspectingly caught when Ethan was giving me some blogging tips.

Actually, for me it is not that bad of a picture so I thought I would post it here.

Sue