Here you will see students as young as 4 and 5 years old doing algebra and "advanced" math, without ever knowing it's supposed to be hard.
You are invited to learn how to use this method...



Monday, November 29, 2010

VLOG 1

Math brains need good food to power them...not processed sugarfied cereal dowsed in artificial food coloring.

Oatmeal is always good but black rice is even better.

Simple: cook black rice.
Put it in bowls.
Handful of raisins.
Two tablespoons of coconut milk.
I use a Vita Mix to make rice oat and cashew milk.
A teaspoon or two of honey and mix it up...

"Just a spoonful of black rice bran contains more health promoting anthocyanin antioxidants than are found in a spoonful of blueberries, but with less sugar and more fiber and vitamin E antioxidants," said Zhimin Xu, Associate Professor at the Department of Food Science at Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in Baton Rouge.

"If berries are used to boost health, why not black rice and black rice bran? Especially, black rice bran would be a unique and economical material to increase consumption of health promoting antioxidants," added Dr Xu.

Coconuts are seen by some as a miracle food, helping protect and cure the body of internal and external ailments. Coconut milk has many uses, most of which build up the immune system and the body's defenses. You can find coconut milk in the ethnic foods section of a local grocery store.

Nutrients
1. Coconut milk contains many vitamins, minerals and electrolytes, including potassium, calcium and chloride.
Saturated Fat
2. The saturated fat in coconut is made up of short-chain and medium-chain fatty acids the body quickly turns into energy instead of storing as fat. Therefore, even though it's high in saturated fat, coconut can aid in weight loss.
Lauric Acid
3. Half the medium-chain fatty acids in coconut milk are composed of lauric acid, which is anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-microbial and anti-fungal. Coconut milk can help boost the immune system.

Dairy-Free
4. Coconut milk is a dairy-free alternative for those who are lactose intolerant or allergic to animal milk. This vegan drink is also soy-free, gluten-free and nut-free.
Relief of Ailments
5. Coconut milk is known to relieve the symptoms of sore throats and ulcers.



Here is a blog post about the Elenco Snap Circuits SC-500 kit we have. As you can see they REALLY, really like playing with it.

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School Lunch. The importance of food for healthy kids and healthy minds:



Speaking at the 2007 EG conference, "renegade lunch lady" Ann Cooper talks about the coming revolution in the way kids eat at school -- local, sustainable, seasonal and even educational food.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Some Math Lessons for the 5 and Under Crowd

A sample of a lesson with a 4 and 5 year old. You can see their progress with skip counting. Soon you will also be able to see their progress with Algebra...over all their understanding of math concepts increases weekly.

The point is not to just teach little kids little math with little numbers...play and have fun and all kinds of math concepts can be discovered.



Always tell them what they have and make them count it, if they give you a wrong answer. Remove the "no" from the lesson and remember they don't get it wrong they just get more information...

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Learn more Algebra for a buck.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Higher Powers of X

Math is just counting. Here we count a bigger rectangle than just "x squared".

60 seconds ought to give you an inkling of how cool this is...note I say "x-squared" but I meant "x-cubed" or "x to the third."

The students are 4 and 5 years old.

Here we factor x3 + 6x2 + 12x + 16!



Here is a longer explanation/demonstration:



At the end they look like geniuses


Here we play with

x3 + 7x2 + 14x + 8



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Learn more Algebra for a buck.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Playing with the Quadratic

Here are a few vids on the Quadratic Equation itself. How to derive it and why it looks like it does. There will be a couple of more short vids on this topic, but for now here are three.

This first vid really needs redoing because you can't always see the symbols and I left off the x in the middle term when I copied it at one point...but good enough for now...




The second EASIER way:


The third and hardest way:



Look for more shortly. Here is a webpage on the quadratic formula at the house of math...

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Monday, November 15, 2010

Headed for the Quadratic

Math is counting. Algebra is counting. See the little boys count. Count little boys count.







From x2 to the Quadratic all we are doing is making rectangles and counting so we can figure out what x is...

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Learn more Algebra for a buck.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Playing With Addends

Playing with addends. A lesson on combining. If you listen carefully you will hear addition and subtraction together.

Here the younger boy is loading up the tray so we can play with it. He is building tens and seeing and touching the pairs, complements or in mathematical nomenclature: addends for TEN.

addition subtraction kit, addends, prescool math activities

This is an "Addition Subtraction kit" from Mortensen Math. Very useful for putting a child in a situation where they cannot fail, they build ten and learn all 45 addends. They can't help but learn some subtraction too. Do you need this kit? It's nice but if you have a combo kit you don't really need it...some parents want to have everything and it is nice to have. Meantime you have everything you need in a combo kit.

addition subtraction kit, addends, prescool math activities

Note they changed clothes for the video...

Here is a quick video showing two boys fooling around with addends. They have become camera aware and now ham it up a little for the camera by pretending they don't know the answers.

Years from now when shown these videos I'm going to be interested in their response. Anyhow, note there is no "no" in the lesson, they are simply told what they have and they are not wrong they just get more information...

Many people use these powerful tools to teach addition at this age and that's about it...and maybe some place value but they can learn so many more concepts.




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Learn Algebra for a buck.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Playing: the best way to learn math.

Here are a few pics of the boys playing math.

manipulatives

Eights, kinda sound like fours when you count them, and you can see three eights is 24.
base ten blocks
Reminds me of Eeyore's stick house, lots of math went on in his mind though as evidenced by his humming a song about fours as he built it...
mortensen math

math fun, preschool math fun

Building ten at this age is a great part of every lesson.

fun math activities, base 10 blocks, base ten manipulatives

Here is a screencast:







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Learn Algebra for a buck.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Fast Fractions Lesson.

This is a screencast of a fractions lesson I did with one of my students.

This is not a beginner lesson but more of an intermediate lesson, after a lot of introductory lessons have already been done.

I did the screencast in one take and obviously without editing...lol...as two of my younger students make a surprise appearance near the end.



I would hope that you can see how you could incorporate lessons on skip counting and multiplication into your fractions lesson with these blocks...the students don't need to have mastered multiplication first and indeed can use lessons like this to learn multiplication.


http://www.crewtonramoneshouseofmath.com/