number sets

One of the concepts I wanted to introduce to Sassy this month was the idea of number sets and counting by twos.

Last month, we experimented with the concept of odd and even by walking up our long, 500-foot driveway to get the mail together. After a long rain, our driveway is filled with puddles here and there all the way to the road. I quickly told her on the way up one day which numbers between 1 and 10 were odd. Then I explained which ones were even.

"Oh!" she said. "So it's like every other number?"

"Yes," I said. "It's exactly that."

I then called out different numbers on the way back. If it was an even number, she was to do nothing unusual. But if it was an odd number, she was to jump into the rain puddle as hard as she could making as big a splash as possible.

She loved this game and begged to play it whenever she saw puddles.

I'm wondering now if the odd/even concept instigated a natural tendency for her to count by two, because she aced the game I made for her that was supposed to teach her how to do this.

Last week, she spent the day in the city with her Nana, and I sent her homeschooling activities with her for the day. One activity was a game of counting using a Hi-Ho Cherry-O game board but changing the play altogether. Here's our counting-in-sets game:

You Need:
A Hi-Ho Cherry-O game board
At least 20 cherries -- 40 is ideal, but not necessary
Two players

Game Play:
The parent (or teacher) asks the child to cover their eyes while the parent puts some cherries on one of the trees.

When the parent is finished, the child must guess how many cherries are on the tree before doing any counting. The parent should only allow about 5 seconds for the guess.

After the child ventures their guess, both players count the cherries together to see if the guess is correct.

If the child guesses correctly, the child gets the cherries. If not, they have to give the parent that amount of cherries (or however many they have if they don't have enough cherries yet).

The game continues until the child "swipes" all the cherries from the parent.

Around Round 3, the parent should begin to count the cherries by twos as they count together to see if the guess was correct.

Purpose

Many children naturally start to count in sets if they are encouraged to "guess" before they count. Orally counting by twos reinforces what they are likely already doing internally.

So how did Sassy do?

Nana said she counted by twos all the way to ten by herself, without any mistakes. Sassy then started counting by threes, so Nana rolled with it and Sassy figured out 3, 6, 9, then wasn't ready to go further. They both reported having a good time.

If you had all 40 cherries that came with the game, you could tweak these instructions to start introducing sets of ten. If you filled two trees completely plus one tree with 7 cherries, that's a nice visual for the number 27.

Along with our game, we read the book "One Hundred Hungry Ants" in our number sets week. In the book, 100 Hungry Ants separate into more and more sets to reach the picnic faster. It was perfect for this first grader.

Finally, in our freeplay, she's been working on building this week. Freeplay is always that -- free -- but she can only choose from the materials on hand. In August, she made me very proud by agreeing to make our toy collection totally plastic-free. She even agreed to redistribute her My Little Ponies, Barbies & horses. I am so touched by her empathy for her little sister and her deep desire to protect her, as that's the only reason she gave up her favorite toys. She knows plastic is made of chemicals and she knows her sister chews on everything.

So her freeplay "setup," as she calls it, was especially lovely without all that plastic. She made a pizza shop, with a little patio outside, a chicken that had to stay out because it was sick, the owners' house up on a hill above the shop, and a road that led there. I adore this child's creativity.

Here's the long view:



Then we have the dining room outside the kitchen (the kitchen was the photo up top):



Here's the outside patio with the umbrella table:



I asked her if the apple was part of the setup or just a snack.

She replied: "Oh, that was just my snack. But I got so caught up in my setup I forgot to eat it! That rarely happens to me."