Simple Math In Chinese Using Manipulatives With DBoyz.

What's annoying to me is a lot of the kids their age can barelyadd numbers in English. I had a interesting conversation with a Chinese teacher who pointed out that yes there may be as many honor students in China as the USA has students but they also have as many failing students as we have students as well.



"Only the smart one comes to USA, no failing students get out..."

I had a similar conversation with a friend who is from Hong Kong. She did "okay" in math but a lot of her friends failed...and what did they fail? Algebra. Base ten blocks make math easy to see in any language. They are quite useful with the deaf and blind too.

Practice and patience is pretty much all it takes to learn another language...and like Chinese they aren't going to learn it all at once. It's the same with math...you didn't get bad at math in one day....you won't get good at math in one day.  Chinese, English and Spanish with those three Languages you can communicate with most of the inhabitants on this planet. They got English by default, Chinese is proving to be a challenge but it's FUN and after Chinese Spanish will seem like a breeze. I was fortunate to go to a high school where I got Latin,  5 years of Spanish and a year of French JFSAG. But no Asian languages were offered...helping them learn Spanish will be MUCH easier than helping them learn Chinese. And Yes there are plans to get some of the Math Materials translated into Spanish. Right now the house of math is mono-lingual.

Anyway we are just having fun playing around with math in Chinese. They still have lots of work to do when it comes to writing symbols...lots of people have already noted that their stroke order is incorrect. Considering their age at that they only get an hour a week I'd say they are doing pretty well.



There is always room for impoverishment, and I have no doubt that they will get better as they progress. Right now they are finding fun that they can write a little bit in "code." I am told they need to master about 3,000 symbols...numbers are pretty straight forward in Chinese. Very simple rules. More uniform than English.  Eleven is ten and one literally in Chinese...twelve is ten and two. Twenty is two tens...lol...in English we have a word for two tens: twenty.

The Mathematics is a Universal Language, learning some in Chinese is fun and will pay dividends in the future. I was going to attempt to do some simple math in Pinyin here but it's too much work...I think I will let the videos do the talking...and people who speak Chinese can cringe all they want.

Trying to write the inflections for even simple stuff like jia (add or plus) jian (subtract or minus) would be a little more effort than I want to put into a simple post like this. Eventually, I think I will discover free software that does some translating that I can just cut and paste...I'm sure it exists I just don't know where at the moment.

The Kit shown is called the numeral identification  kit, or Number ID for short. It is great for REALLY young kids. like two and a half...if they are learning to talk they can learn the names of numbers just like they learn other words. It's just vocabulary. The how many part can be learned later and the fact that the six can be made up of a combination of other numbers can be learned later too.

Use the basic concepts and teaching techniques like the three period lesson and degree of difficulty to make the learning easier and fun...also don't forget to play, they learned a lot of Chinese playing Chutes and Ladders in Chinese and you can make up other games as well even if they aren't learning Chinese. Games and Play: that's HOW they learn.

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Sample Lesson Math Vocab

Here is a sample lesson where we learn a little math vocabulary. It's important to know what the words mean...in the mathematics the words sound funny to little kids because they come to us from the Greeks and from Latin...but the concepts are easily understood.

You should also be able to see how the concepts of area and perimeter NATURALLY lead to practice with addends and multiplication and division. This goes well with basic lessons about addition.



I employ the three period lesson and you will note the repetition and lack of the word "no". If they get point to radius when I ask for diameter I tell them that's the radius show me the diameter...no need for the word NO.

The vid is a little long but it's a useful as a sample lesson and will appear on the Sample Lessons page.

Here is a short vid from a little later in the lesson where we are just playing with blocks and learning and reinforcing addends:

How To Teach Counting And Make It Fun

The mathematics begins with counting. Because as you can see from the basic concepts math is the study of numbers and all we do with numbers is count. How do we teach counting? Start with patterning. Just say the numbers from one to five, then one to ten then ten to twenty. Repeatedly. Start with your fingers, at bed time is a good time but any time is fine.

With most beginning students I make them write out the five basic concepts. With older students counting is redundant, they can all count, and you can make a joke of it. After they write down "Math is the study of numbers and all we do with numbers is count", or some variation thereof, ask them to count to twenty. Then ask them to count backwards from twenty.

“See, I can teach you math, we are one fifth of the way there...you can even count backwards.” Then ask them to recite the ABC's backwards. So far I have only had a very few kids that could.

“Hmm, looks like you're better at math.”

Younger students (and many older students) need to be taught the patterns whether it's counting or addition with addends, multiplication or what have you. When it's counting start with the simple concept: the highest number we count to is nine. The numbers tell us how many the places tell us what kind. After that it's just vocabulary, we have English names for all the numbers, even really big numbers. One, two...seven, eight, nine and then ONE of the next kind, one ten. One ten and one unit is called eleven. One and one is just two, you may have to explain this several times to a three year old even if you are using manipulatives. 11 looks like two to them and this looks like three: 111. Several explanations may be required to

Then just pattern: Ten, twenty, thirty...seventy, eighty, ninety ONE hundred.

One hundred, two hundred...eight hundred, nine hundred, ONE thousand...it never gets past nine.

Two tens and three units has a name, twenty three...what's important is understanding the concepts place value is easy and almost visually obvious and becomes clear after just a few explanations.

We count the big ones first. One hundred, one ten and one unit are one hundred eleven. 111. With manipulatives this IS visually obvious but when writing 111, little kids often think THREE...can you see how much easier it is to teach place value?

You will at Crewton Ramone's House of Math!

Teaching a child to count properly takes MONTHS, you can teach them to pattern and memorize by counting from one to 20 over and over again, which is fine; however this can lead to some confusion. Ever hear, "my kid can count to 10 but gets a little confused in the teens"? I have. A lot. Make sure they see all the teens are, are just ten and some more, or specifically ten and one through nine units more, and that the pattern repeats with two tens and one through nine units, and three tens and so on. This way they get the concept and the pattern and link the vocabulary to the numbers.

I can't tell you how many times I got a student that was failing algebra that had to use their fingers to add numbers. Simple numbers like nine and three. Asked to multiply they didn't have their tables memorized either without thinking hard about it. OF COURSE THEY WERE FAILING ALGEBRA: they had no foundation upon which to stand. Back to basics. Addends. No magic. Then again, when the basics are mastered correctly the magic begins. First counting, then addition with addends, then multiplication: seems obvious.

“Obvious” is the most dangerous word in mathematics.” ~Anon

So first thing: get them “off their fingers.”

Addition and multiplication are just way of counting very quickly. In order to get there you start off crawling then you walk then you can run, then you can hit the hyperspace button...or at leaste turn on the after burners, the easy way, visit Crewton Ramone's House of Math for help with teaching counting and much more.

Sort Coins

Today we did some simple sorting and counting with a bag of change. The wee ones learned the names of the coins using a three period lesson, although they will need more reinforcement, for the next few hours they have the names of the coins down. Again, it's not about storage, it's about retrieval and building the pathways to the information that is contained in the mind. It has taken us a long time to figure out the mind is not contained in the head, although the brain is. The brain is simply our interface with the mind.

The oldest one still occasionally confuses nickles and quarters...stacking them requires fine motor skills...and gives us a chance to count by fours...we glossed over the equivalency of the coins, that wasn't the focus of the lesson. All we were doing was counting and sorting. Later we will listen to multiplication rock songs...and sing about fours and fives...

In the picture we have sorted out the quarters and are stacking them, later he will be able to ask questions like why do we stack them in fours but dines in fives and pennies in fives and even nickles in fives?

There are a ton of things you can do to play with math concepts everyday...

They watched PBS kids and sorted coins...the youngest one said "this is taking too long" and later "we will be counting coins forever" but he watched TV and sorted coins, sorted coins and watched TV and soon they were in their respective piles...we celebrated with some yays and clapping.