Archive for January, 2011
One Thing Leads to Another
Yesterday, while Ben was reading a book called Born to Run, he read something about molasses, about a runner who liked using molasses instead of other sweeteners. We talked about it briefly, about various sweeteners, how people’s tastes have changed over time, and [Read More]
Playing with Geoboards
Geoboards come in a variety of sizes and patterned grids, and they’re lots of fun to play with using an assortment of colorful rubber bands. You can create repetitive designs, six-pointed stars, triangles, squares, hexagons, rectangles, and all kinds of other shapes. [Read More]
Playing with Cuisenaire Rods
Cuisenaire rods are colorful wooden rods ranging from 1cm to 10cm lengths. They’re great for creating patterns, counting, sorting, measuring, adding, multiplying, and all sorts of other fun explorations. Although the rods were originally created for formalized classroom [Read More]
A Collection of Fairy Tales
Over the years, we enjoyed a wonderful collection of children’s fairy tales. We read traditional tales, newer versions from favorite authors, and variants from different countries. The more we read, the more we were able to find various retellings, often with plot [Read More]
Making Comparisons
Earlier this week, I found some old notes I had written about playing with pattern blocks and Cuisenaire rods when Ben was about seven years old. We had been stacking the pattern blocks into towers and measuring them with the Cuisenaire rods. While doing this, we made [Read More]
Fun Frames for Block Designs
Designing and playing with wooden blocks of all kinds can be lots of fun. Sometimes it’s nice to use a frame to give yourself a specific space in which to work. A wooden serving tray with raised edges works well as a frame for playing with square color tiles, [Read More]
Playing with Pattern Blocks
Wooden pattern blocks are wonderful in so many ways. You can create designs with them, build with them, and play games with them. You can talk about their colors, shapes, angles, and how they relate to each other. You can lay them out in repetitive patterns or beautiful [Read More]