Math On the Sidewalk

I'm saying sidewalk but technically it's the driveway.  Whatever.  You get the point.  LOL  Just for a nice change of pace, we headed outside with our chalk.  I wanted to do a bit of review of addition and subtraction as far as each one knew.  Pooh is more advanced than Tigger in this area (which he should be) so he got the more complex problems to do.  I used my color to make the problem and they got to pick the color that they liked.  You can't erase mistakes so be prepared for that.  I think we could try wetting the cement to see what effect that would have on the brightness of the chalk.  Make sure your cement isn't too hot during the midday sun.  We caught it on a good day--not too hot or too bright.

Tigger happy at work.

 

 He worked on adding with nines.  He converted it to 10+ as we learned in Math U See.

Then we worked on doing the same process with the eights.

 

 Here is Pooh working hard on his complex addition and subtraction problems.

 

 You can see he's working thru carrying.  He actually hadn't done this in a while and did extremely well.  I couldn't believe I didn't hear fits and screaming about the problems.  Was it the change in environment/place/time?  One never knows.  Just go with the flow.  It's easier.  ;D

I noticed some issues with the reading of the larger numbers, such as hundred thousand, million.  So I drew houses that gradually increased in size.  They started at units and moved up to about 10 millions I think.  A sidewalk/driveway is the perfect place to draw that out.

You don't have to get obsessive over neatness.  My houses weren't perfect squares but they got the point across.

We will definitely be back out there when it cools a bit and try it again.  This would be a good idea for different math activities.  Measuring out areas, shape drawing for the little ones, fractions, etc.

If you have more ideas that would work with this activity, please post a comment and share!