Third Grade Maths Ideas

OK.....

Third Grade Maths is a daunting thing...  Maybe it's just here in Victoria, Australia.  Maybe we're a little different - I'm not sure what it is.  But for some reason the educational "powers that be" have decided that in the third grade children aged about 8 or 9 years old need to know the following:

• all the three dimensional shapes
• all about angles
• fractions
• decimals
• all the times tables up to 12
• measurements of liquid, solids, temperature, length, area and weight
• how to tell time accurately with analogue and digital clocks
• adding, subtracting, multiplication and division into the hundreds (at least)
• some crazy flipped out notion of "flipping, turning or rotating"
• how to represent data on graphs
• finding plots on grids
• number patterns
• rounding off to the nearest ten or hundred; estimating
• adding and subtracting dollars and coins

And

• chance outcomes (probability)

I am NOT joking. 

Marnie and I do Maths just about every day.  And I resent the time it takes enormously.  The only benefit I see to this investment of time is that it will make fourth and fifth grade a little easier.  I am certainlyl planning to spend less time on Maths next year. 

We move slowly through the material - another reason I believe that the benefits will emerge over the next few years.  I am guided by this book:

See the happy dolphins playing together in the water?  Yeah right...

No, really, I have found this book is very good for the way it  brightly introduces each of the (many) topics of third grade maths. The book only provides an introduction however, so to really learn the material through repetition and extension I use this book:



This book contains pages and pages of problems in all of the categories listed above.  The print is small and you might like to photocopy and enlarge the relevant sections, but Marnie is used to it now and just works through the problems.  They are repetitive and by the end of a unit of work your third grader should know that topic pretty well. 


This 'book learning' approach to Maths is pretty dry I know, and it goes against the grain for me.  I use it because:

• it works - Marnie really learns the material because it causes her to focus her attention, sit still and methodically work through problems
• Marnie actually doesn't mind working through material this way - she has always enjoyed sitting down and working through puzzle books

Here are some lessons I have learnt as a mum-home-educator of maths during this past year:

• we really need to do maths about four or five times per week because otherwise the 'learning' just doesn't happen.  Marnie will forget what we've been working on if we've left it for more than about four or five days.  We need to build slowly each day, or else we just end up going over the same lesson again and not getting anywhere.  If i were a home educating mum who could relate the maths lessons to everyday life then I'm sure the learning would consolidate - but it does not come naturally to me; so I guess it has to be done in a routined and consistant way.

• I've tried to incorporate other ways of learning and some things have been very succesful for maths - games, songs, moving around, projects (drawing and designing posters).  Here are some examples.

On a cheap books stall at a local shopping complex, I found this book and CD which contains  a heap of songs that help with basic addition:

Marnie, who is musically oriented, and I danced and jumped around chanting and singing the basic addition sums:  one plus one is two; one plus two is three: etc.

It is sung in an American accent which grates on my nerves but many of the songs have jivey rhythms that you can really swing your mamma hips to. The addition sums go up to 12 plus.  There are also pages of adding games where you use a dice and work through a maze or spiral where you must complete an addition sum before moving on.  Marnie adored it!  It was not until she reached the age of about 'nine and a bit' that I really thought she 'got it', and could confidently add two numbers together up to twenty or so. The book also has addition problems that are in the tens, and does not progress to the hundreds. 

I also found a website that was really useful:

http://www.mathcats.com/

This website had some great crafty activites that related to maths.  We made the 'three dimensional shape city' and also the weaving board. 

For subtraction we used two packs of flashcards I purchased cheaply that have the 'minus sums' up to about twelve.  I spread them out on the floor and we had a competition to see "how many subtraction sums can you find that equal 5".  She busily crawled around the floor snatching at cards and then using mental maths to work out the sums - it worked a treat! I also found (at the library) a simple board game that involved spinning a spinner and then subtracting numbers to move along the board to the finish line. 

For multiplication we have headed out of doors to the driveway, and chalked up pathways of numbers.  Then I ask her to jump in threes and shout out the numbers (for 3x tables).  I find this particularly useful for explaining division.  "How many jumps of three are there to reach twelve?"

Inspired by a Waldorf book I bought earlier in the year, we also have 'number journeys' along our number path.  Here's an example:

"A brave angel (warrior/knight/princess/frog... whatever) set out on a long journey.  She needed to complete a quest.  She traveled forward seven spaces and met four flying monkeys who bombarded her with coconuts!  (Child acts out ducking from the coconuts and fending off said flying monkeys).  She had to go back one space for every coconut that hit her on the head.  (Child steps back one or two spaces)  What number is she on now?  Five... oh so seven minus two equals five!"  You continue on with the story going backwards and forwards, making sure to clearly state each sum out loud "So for every magic jewel she finds, the angel can fly forward two spaces.  She found three magic jewels... So three times two equals Six!  She can fly forward six spaces.  What number is she on now?"

You could conceivably continue this story until sunset, but my sanity usually starts to give out after about fifteen minutes.  I have been known to continue these stories until after dark on a balmy summer's night - as long as i'm in a comfy chair, with sparkling wine in one hand and packet of chips in the other. 

This is the waldorf maths book I purchased online:

I Know it says second grade, but Marnie, still aged 8 at the beginning of this year was at a stage when this book was relevant and valuable.  As you can see on the front they have a story about the way numbers ordered themselves into hundreds, tens and units - according to the colours of the rainbow.  This was really useful for helping Marnie understand about how you need to line numbers up in columns to add and subtract.  In fact she made up her own story:  about the five black eyed quadrapusses (named Adam, Atticus, Max, Sam and Dan), who were completely out of control with their numbers until Adam quadrapuss pulled them into line and showed them how to get themselves organized.  I wonder about her choice of 'Adam' as the black eyed quadrapuss who sorted everything out - do you think it's significant - maybe she was tapping into some ancient archetypal encoded memory that sits unharnessed in her mind?!  Maybe not..



Another website I found useful this year was:

http://www.copacabana-p.schools.nsw.edu.au/Get_Smart_Pages/Get_Smart_Maths_s2_Space&Measure.html

Some really great games to play online:  a NSW primary school developed this website and I think it is fantastic; literally dozens of maths games to play.  Marnie did not even know she was doing maths. 

I also included maths in a couple of science experiments we did this year, where she needed to plot the results of experiments on a graph.  We did temperature and wind direction for the course of a week and then designed a bar graph and line graph.  We also focussed on measurements of all kinds for about a month - and this was one topic where I actually found that doing 'real life' stuff helped with the maths.  for example we talked about mass and cupsful, and litres as we shopped for the flour, or baked a cake.  I asked Marnie to design a poster that showcased all the different types of measurements and she applied herself well - produced a fine piece of work with all the different types of measurement - metres, litres, degrees, square centimetres, grams, etc. 

Finally, and I'm sure I'll remember other stuff after I post this:  there is the topic of 'logic' which is an intriguing but worthy topic to cover - I guess it comes under the "thinking skills" component of the VELS (Victorian Essential Learning Standards).  There are two sites that we used for this, I'm sure there are heaps more (including the quests on Club Penguin and Poptropica) 

http://www.anikasodyssey.com/  You follow a girl through the forest and you need to solve problems and challenges that she is confronted with.

http://www.garfield.com/fungames/scavengerhunt/scavengerhunt.html  This is as much fun for grown ups as kids;  try to find the donuts as you wander through the haunted house.  Logic, logic, logic....


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