Enter Counting Blocks & Pyramids

I saw these at Tar­get yes­ter­day in the $1 sec­tion.  I can’t pass up that sec­tion.  EVER! Some­times I find noth­ing of use there but some­times I find use­ful gems.  I’ve never been so happy to see blocks in my whole life.  Mr. J tends to have a hard time look­ing at the num­bers on a page & I noticed day one that he gets frus­trated doing his math because of it.  Enter the Count­ing Blocks.

He did his math pages today with a smile.  He & I sat on the floor while he showed me how to do math prob­lems with the blocks.  I think he rel­ished feel­ing like he was teach­ing me some­thing, I let him have that moment (I know I’m gen­er­ous like that). Seri­ously though I had for­got­ten about how kids really do need hands-on at this age & stage.  I had planned to get some manip­u­la­tives for him & the other kids to use. I just hadn’t done it yet.

With the blocks he could stack, sort & count with­out feel­ing stressed while look­ing at the math prob­lems.  He laughed.  He relaxed dur­ing math. I laughed & relaxed with him.

While he worked on his math.  I noticed Mr. G & Mamacita hard at work on their own project.  They were build­ing pyra­mids.  Talk­ing about the col­ors in their pyra­mids, the shapes of the count­ing blocks & the pyra­mid all being tri­an­gles, & they counted out how many count­ing blocks it took to make dif­fer­ent sized pyramids.

They then used the count­ing blocks to cre­ate pat­terns.  The pat­terns started sim­ple & became more com­pli­cated as they played. They also sorted through the blocks match­ing the col­ors into piles.  I really enjoyed these because they had so many uses & that the uses emerged with­out a lot of me forc­ing it.   As the kids all were doing their work I’d hop into the con­ver­sa­tion every now & again, to help or offer a gen­tle cor­rec­tion if needed.  Really, I just love when kids are learn­ing with­out real­iz­ing it.  I also think these are a a great thing to have in your home regard­less of where your kids go to school because they are so ver­sa­tile.  I’m wish­ing I had bought some sooner.

Tagged as: counting, counting blocks, dollar bin, homeschooling, kids, learning, life learning, math, math manipulatives, pyramids, target