Subraction in Action

Subtraction when done right should be easy and fun. All it takes is the proper method and a little practice. In this video you see intermediate supremely simple subtraction. Where we are not just taking away one digit...but two. With a little more practice, long strings of digits can be done quickly and easily.

I don't see why it's difficult to train your child to understand if that number is bigger than that number then this number is one less... And if the number on the bottom is bigger just add the addend. And little more practice you can go from left to right instead of right to left. The idea is to make computation fast and easy.



It is amazing to me that we have fallen down this early on in the teaching of mathematics. This is just subtraction, it shouldn't be hard. If you want to make subtraction easy and fun for your kids just click the link. Supremely Simple Subtraction.

Base Ten Blocks and Playdoh

Basically what you see here is a math rich environment in action.

Playin is learning. Play with the stuff they like to play with... In this case playdoh and manipulatives, or base 10 bucks.

This screen cast got over 150 hits in a day, I'm pretty sure people were amazed by their ability to multiply more than by the playdoh but you never know with the Internet.

If you like it, share it.

Basically we played and had fun first and learned math concepts second. this play session lasted about two hours you'll the complete lack of symbols interplay we just talked about the concepts, the symbols will come later.

Here you see us playing with addends and subtraction. A lot is going on here... You see Hero Zero wearing his five disguise at the top, first it was a 10 and we made addends for 10 below it and the four-year-old showed me ten take away one in no uncertain terms.

Here we see an addend for seven and a couple cutouts.

Here you can see how the boys lined up and press them in.

And here we are getting ready for addends bigger than 10.

Talk about making impressions, here we see 6+4 really is the same as 7+3, and they're both the same as 10.

So what if they don't line up  perfectly? They still "get it" and that this age the emphasis is on fun not on being didactic with clay. You can't play "wrong."

Cutouts for the one I don't talk about talk much about the video. And you don't see it much here either but we did all kinds of map of the cutouts, mostly adding and subtracting and smooshing together.

Then we started playing with fraction, under my direction... It's play but it's directed play.  "Why don't we..?" "What if we..?" "What would happen if..?""Can you make a square and cut it up?"

Looks like an American cheese single. And right there I got about 100 ideas for lessons with a pack of cheese singles... Eat your math lessons, that will get them subtracting--assuming you like eating processed American mucus forming, chemically enhanced for optimum flavored cheese-like substances. I wonder if I could get Kraft as a sponsor. Anyway I can see lots of lessons that could be done with cheese singles.

Here we talked about one whole, then because it was yellow we cut it into a 4 x 4 square using the four block as a guide. First would cut it in half then we cut each half into it quarters and the make up the other way and we talked about equivalent fractions 1/4 equals 2/8, and they could see it. And then we got those in the house and you get what we see here:

This gives a good chance to practice coming by fours and to see 4/16 is the same as one quarter.  You can also see a relationship of 1 to 3, 1:3, but we did not talk about it at all I mention it here because it's so blatantly obvious we could show it equivalent fractions the other way keep it simple and fun and don't try to stuff too much in there at a time. Older kids and adults might be ready to make the switches between the two but with the toddlers I made sure it was a coherent lesson with no jumps and perception. It's one square with a strip colored in as opposed into rectangles, one over the other to show ratio and equivalent fractions of one third that way. This one square teaches a lot of math to toddlers as it is. his could just as easily been a lesson about right angles and squares and square root.

The older boy wants in on the action since you did such a good job accounting by fours and sixes.

But the younger boy would like to know that he did all the "work."

Bigger is funner. Here we put  together a 6 x 6 square and talked about fractions as we did it can you see that fractions and multiplication go hand-in-hand and that you can't teach one without the other than that you can teach multiplication with fractions.  Why not teach fractions while you teach multiplication or why not teach multiplication with fractions?

Since it was all cut up already or use a six to show one out of six or 1/6 and that was the same as 6/36 or six out of 36. Again they didn't see any symbols and we didn't do any writing during the lesson. But when they do see them, the symbols will make sense.

 Just for fun, here's one of 36. 1/36.

 And since they had some purple Playdoh,  they made six out of 36 themselves. Again I see you ratio listing here 5 to 1 or 1:5, but we didn't do it. You could if your students are a little older. Or as a separate lesson.

 Them we made it smaller and talk about fives and fifths each blue-black is one of five or 1/5th. Of course conking my fives is easy and fun.

 Which is the same as 2/10ths, and here you see them using their imagination to break it into tenths.

 It was fun rolling out the skinny lines and making stuff with them. I missed taking pictures of them playing with the yellow flat and showing other fractions and fraction concepts. But you get the idea.

 And after we played long enough with these concepts we just crunched it all together and started over again.

"What should we do next?" the four-year-old asked.
 "I dunno." I said, "let's just play and see what happens."

Here is a video for the boys help me tell the story. Caution: they may blow your mind with their ability to count.



At the time I made this post using YouTube and Screencast-o-Matic had outages that were commonplace. I put screencasts here for all my teacher friends who have YouTube blocked at skool but then the screencasts stopped working so now I'm going back and finding screen casts that don't work and am replacing them with  YouTube vids or links.

This screen cast is titled "Crewton Ramone play W/Clay Learn Math" on both YouTube and Screencast-o-Matic. People ask me if they can use my material on blogs and web posts, lancer is by all means just a link back to wherever you got it.

Here are couple of old posts where they play and learn math:

More fun math activities.

Math rich environment.

Four-year-old math enrichment.

Find us on Facebook... and at the house of math.

Base Ten Block Party

Help Me Get Ranked.

If you have a blog or a website I'm happy to link to you, too.

People always ask if they can pin my pics of base ten blocks. YES.  Just give a link back to where you got the pic.  Kinda like I just did, there.  You click on the words "base ten blocks" and it takes you to Crewton Ramone's House of Math. The 'base ten blocks' part is called the "anchor text" and the "link" (where it goes when you click the anchor text) is 

http://www.crewtonramoneshouseofmath.com 

(a href="http://www.crewtonramoneshouseofmath.com")base ten blocks(/a)
 
Replace the ( ) with <  > and you have the code you need to drop a link into your pages. Those with a little web experience know what I'm talking about. If not just send me an email and we'll figure it out. This will also help me rank with search engines for the term "base ten blocks". Right now I am no where near page one and the pages that are, are not as relevant as my site if I do say so myself. lol  Think back to how you found me in the first place if it wasn't a super excited friend, it was probably you searching for something to do with homeschool math on the internet. This will help others find me too...again people ask how can I help spread the word. This is a good way but things as simple as hitting like or share or mentions in whatever social media you use helps quite a bit. Reall, every little it helps.

You can pull stuff off my website or this blog too if you have a blog or website that needs content, again just give a link back to where you got whatever it was from...to include text. EZ.




JUST PLAY BLOCKS


People also always ask me, what do you mean "just play with base ten blocks?" Just what I said.

This isn't rocket surgery: just play blocks when they are little kids (roughly 8 and under but even teenagers can have fun and learn math just playing with blocks but then it moves to a reward and free time, with the little kids especially 5 and under it's pretty much ALL free time and sing songs ). And DON'T over do it by asking ALL of the questions listed 'at once' or in the same session...they should be "natural" questions. You may also take note of the child or student as they are building; they may say something like, "I need 4 fives...two for each of the smaller ships." For little kids that's 4 divided by 2...and BTW how much is four fives? 5x4.

You could sing songs...whisper count, just skip count...whatever. Keep it simple and fun.

Base ten blocks make math fun.

How many twos on the big ship? Five. Let's count them, 2,4,6,8,10.

Hey how many three's is that on the super duper laser cannon turret? . And what shape is that? Square.

A fast lesson square root should be obvious and natural.

What's 40 plus 40? 80. If you had to use fours how many would you need? 20. Way easier to just grab two 40's huh...?

If you make a cube out of 3's how many units would be in it? 27. Hey look instead of writing 3x3x3 we could write 3³--that's called economy of symbol.


What's 60 plus 60? 120. Wanna get crazy and count 120 by sixes? NO. lol Do it anyway. Lets see if we can find a pattern to make it easier.


You can also see a calc lesson had gone on before this where we learned about doughnut factories and water tanks.

A lesson on square roots of numbers like 2 and 3 can be seen at the nose of the big ship where we wrote out quite a few places. It's all math.

Here was a fun response to build me something.  This is the hull of a pirate ship...with cannons and everything.

Kirk's Tutoring Get's it. You might give his FB page a like.

This came from Kirk's Tutoring, who also uses this method.   I assume the student was given free time but gee, seems a lot of questions could be asked about his too...also note the symmetry and the observations that could be made here, and they could even just start with what the word "symmetry" means. Which is a very complex concept for the 6 and under crowd but there it is shown clearly.

The work here was building a cube of hundreds made out of addends for 10. Then the kid "splendified"  it by adding some hundred squares and the pyramid of multi tens on top.

This is a freighter with huge engines so it can get cargo from planet to planet FAST. 

Here is a building with a monorail going by it.  I thought it was a house with a fence but the little girl who built it set me straight. and she asked for some help flushing up the blocks,  Note the addends for 4 and 9, and of course we counted by sevens, just so she could hear the pattern.  7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49...how many seven is 35? Did you hear THIRTY-TWO...? They should say something like no, but I heard FORTY-Two. Did you hear 15 or 18? No but I did hear 14...etc.

He called Mortensen More Than Math for a reason. Imagination, fine motor skills AND math are developed by playing with these blocks. This page was to give you ideas...NOT BLUEPRINTS.

These need to be turned into little booklets with instructions on how to build them (kinda like those booklets you get with Lego kits) and some observations that can be made while doing so...

The problem I have with doing books like this is that some of you (not all of you) will ONLY build the ones you see in the books ONLY ask the questions I list etc. You have to play and be creative; these are just examples , a vague framework from which you can get ideas and then allow your kids to be creative...and build whatever they want. As they build talk about what they did. Use some symbols to show we can use numbers to "talk" about what they did (express reality numerically). And using mathematical symbols is a WHOLE lot faster than English or whatever language other than mathematics you speak. 

Get  a FREE book to help you get started exploring and discovering the wondrous world of mathematics as presented via base ten blocks.  Just click this link to get Supremely Simple Subtraction delivered directly into your inbox.

Homeschool Math, Games & Activities with Base Ten Blocks for Interger Fun.

Using base ten blocks to teach Homeschool Math is the topic of conversation for a lot of people who have chosen to homeschoool...asking namely, "how am I going to teach these kids math if I failed math...?" And of course your first instinct is to teach math the way you were taught, even though you know from personal experience that it might not be the most effective way to learn math...here is a method that works and has been PROVEN effective--and best of all it's fun...and as an added bonus no number line to start with, just a noisy game kids love.

Here is that simple game for teaching integers.


I was going to make this a much lengthier post, but let's just keep it short and simple. My subtraction manual,  Supremely Simple Subtraction is doing quite well, although I have now had several conversations where the gist of it is there is no way to describe how cool that book is...lol...still getting people who already have it to leave a simple comment is very difficult for a lot of reasons, but as you can see quite a few have done so now. Click that link get a FREE book...well, not entirely free you have to give me your email, but you won't have to worry about getting inundated with emails from me...in fact quite the opposite. There are people who have signed up on various email lists who have to this day not gotten a single email from me since. Even when they WANT an email to inform them of the new password or for notification of one of Mortco's extremely rare sales.

I haven't gotten around to making a list and getting an email program but I have hired an assistant, a Girl Tuesday if you will, and I think she will work wonders in getting things done and freeing up my time...so you may in fact get an email from me in March informing you of a special sale.  And if you miss it you miss it. People have I think at last given up waiting for another sale from Mortco at these prices.  And I warned people that prices were going up, but people are used to gimmicks so they thought prices would go up so we could mark it down and call it a sale...lol...no: prices have actually gone up.  Same with my passwords...there might be two sales this year on them and they are not going to happen again...a Birthday Sale for the elder boy when he turns TEN...he won't turn ten again so don't expect a sale like that again...although the younger says we will also have a sale when he turns ten but that years from now, so I wouldn't wait...


I like this video because you can watch them learn in real time. Play along don't just watch math is not a spectator sport. Also would it be as much fun if it was just me and one student? This is why I like groups. More is learned faster. I have used this game for years and I can tell lots of different stories about kids learning with the number line and getting confused and then this game clearing things up. Also the explanations in Supremely Simple Subtraction work wonders.

I have had cases where the older sibling was taught with a number line and the younger learned with blocks thru me and the younger sibling blew the older sibling out of the water when it came to test time on integers...eventually I will have ten Series C Manuals done, subtraction is book three in the series, book one will be "Groovy Games & Addicting Activities" of which what you see here is just one. Series A Games and Activities is completely free no email or other interaction required there, hard copy costs about $3.20 (plus shipping) from Mortco. Don't say I never gave you nothin'.

You can also use algebra and factoring polynomials to teach integers...but if you want to learn to do so, you'll need a password (then just go to advanced algebra on my website...or be good at digging around on this blog and the internet.  Here is a page regarding the teaching of addition and subtraction and more that you might find useful and may have had a hard time finding on your own.

Note the girls are at no disadvantage whatsoever, and you may note I make an effort to call on the girls more than the boys. The myth that girls can't do math must be busted and laid to rest along side the myth that woman can't learn to read, permanently.  That myth about women and reading was prevalent just a few hundred years ago in western culture.

You can also use cuisenaire rods to play this game, just mark one side with a pen and make that the negative side. No biggie.

A few testimonials:

"By the way, YOU ARE AWESOME! I actually clapped for you when you explained some concept soooo simply and clearly.It is fantastic!" ~K Ontario, Canada.We are excited for math today!!! ~amazed parents from all over the globe.First, I wanted to thank you for being out there and for introducing me to the Mortensen Method. I'm a new homeschooler who's been searching for Math under every nook and cranny of the globe. Worksheets I can make. Flashcards I can draw. Concepts and vision...now THAT'S something to pay for.
EDIT
Also, as a believer in the separation of church and state from an educational standpoint, I felt really at home at your House. Thank you for that, too.
EDITFinally, thank you, thank you, thank you for mentioning somewhere, somehow, in some side comment that I can no longer find in your fantastic maze of a world the work of Liping Ma. I immediately bought her Knowing & Teaching Elementary Mathematics and have been forever changed as a result. It made me rethink the way EVERY subject is taught, learned and subsequently taught again. I never would have even heard of her if it weren't for you. EDITI am extremely eager to start having my "oh, I'm just not good at math, never was" mind blown. ~PF USA

"I've paid a lot more for a lot less." ~amazed parents from all over the globe.

"Ps. Your parents teacher training is great!" ~EM, UK

"The training is crazy. No one is offering anything like it that I know of...and your price is crazy too." ~JC, CA.

"The amount of stuff you get for the money is crazy."~JJ, New Hampshire.

"Just got the Parent/ Teacher Password.CR wasn't lying when he said 1 page was worth the price. Get it for yourself to learn how to think math." ~KY, USA.

" I really like how you do math. My kids do too! We were having problems and you made math good and happier for us. I sincerely say Thank You from the bottom of my heart." ~CS, Ohio.

"So, I am absolutely flabbergasted by the stuff I am learning just hanging out in the House of Math like four to five hours (literally) per day! Before the little one gets up, I'm on. Nap time, I'm on. After bedtime, I'm on with toothpicks bracing my eyelids. Even before purchasing the passwords! It's like a crash course re-education, and I am infinitely grateful..."

Here is a collection of Testimonials.

Base Ten Blocks For A Real Head Start

Base ten blocks really do make math easy and fun. If you spend even just a few minutes looking around my website and this blog, you will find videos of little kids learning big math...and having fun while doing it. Base ten blocks make it visually obvious and fun for students of all ages. The younger the better.

Here is a group of kids playing math. Do they look engaged to you? Which one is the problem child?  Which one is considered the genius child? In this pic you can't tell. These students are all around 10 years old.



Get them started off right by using base ten blocks. Here are a couple of students that by now I'm sure you recognize. People are of course amazed at their ability to do math in their heads, thus disproving the thinking that base ten blocks somehow lead to block dependency where they won't be able to do math without having the blocks in hand and other ridiculous ideas.  In fact, I got the job teaching the kids you see above because these two were doing multiplication in their heads in a health food store (calculating simple stuff like if it costs $2.73 per pound and I buy 6 pounds of it how much does it cost?) and one thing led to another.



"This is back when I didn't know what anything was..." one of them remarked upon seeing this vid after not seeing it for a long time. Note how when they are young like this, how it looks is important in answering the question, "are they same?" This persists into adulthood and certainly into the teen years...2 + 1 = 3 does NOT look same because of the color of the blocks and on one side there is only one block and on the other two blocks...but in total number it is the same, and this is quickly understood. "The equals sign never lies" is an important math concept. Concept based math teaching with manipulatives speeds and eases the whole process. Very soon (a couple of years) and they are doing math like this.  Everybody is so impressed. They think it's EASY because it is.

Meantime many students have lost track of what the symbol equals even means and somehow come up with the "the answer is" instead of same as...this one understanding has, I have been told directly by older students, made a huge difference in algebra, pre-calc, and trig, and of course calculus. Anyone will tell you x + 5 = 8 doesn't look same, but that statement says it is...IF x = 3. I was also reminded of how much things get lost and confused working with a AP calculus student...because math gets so segmented and compartmentalized they fail to see relationships.

Here is the "whole thing" for those of you interested. This lesson is also on the sample lessons page (I think) along with many hours more video of sample lessons with base ten blocks. These are actual unrehearsed lessons not scripted demonstrations: practice not theory. If you want theory I have about 3 hours of it up now on the parent teacher training page...with more to come. There's some short free stuff there now for you to check out if you want to get a better idea of the theory behind the method. And there are posts like this to help you understand more about the method and posts like this to help you get started using base ten blocks.



So of course now doing algebra like this is no big deal and neither one of them is even 10 yet. I keep telling them as they get older it's less impressive which is why this is funny on a lot of levels. It's kind of an inside joke. You can see him looking at the picture and being very careful to get it right...he looks at the picture YOU see the symbols.



If you have older kids or students, base ten blocks make math visually obvious for them too, the blocks level the playing field because they speak to all learning styles. Whether male or female, visual, kinesthetic, or auditory learners, ALL benefit from the use of base ten blocks. And  younger really is better. So I made this to help get them started off right. Combine with this blog and website and your kids won't have to worry about common core mathematics, because they'll know math not just have some stuff memorized and jumping through the silly hoops on tests showing work or "number sense" won't be hard at all...all they may see the absurdity of it all.

I have a goofy little base ten block book I wrote that people have found useful for the younger crowd. If you have a copy please go leave a comment on this page. There was a spurt of comments when I first built the page but now they have trickled off. Add yours. Good, bad or indifferent.

"I have to tell you that when I first started to watch your videos I cried....after learning it myself in school (haha) then teaching my three daughters algebra using Saxon, Math U See and things from the Teaching Company, I never really had any idea of what I was doing. Watching the videos of you made everything make sense!!! I'm sure that this is a labor of love for you but I just wanted to say thank you! It is much appreciated." ~HS, Ohio, USA.

Having traveled the USA doing seminars I can tell you this was not an uncommon response when people finally understood a math concept and faced their math demons...usually revolving around algebra but sometimes with much simpler things like why invert and multiply--something most teachers have no idea how to explain and end up saying "just memorize it..."  Avoid the problems in the first place it's never too late to break the cycle, start off with my book if you have young children.

Here is what it looks like when you give a young kid a head start with base ten manipulatives. YOU can do this too.

Base Ten Block Battle

Playing with base ten blocks. You can't help but make learning fun. Again building stuff over and over again because they want to shoot it down is more fun than worksheets. It is important to use two hands for optimum whole brain sensory input. When the student uses both hands more learning takes place easier, it's that simple.

Using base ten blocks to get addends mastered make learning math almost effortless. First they learn their addends which helps them add two numbers which is basic addition; which helps them add series of numbers which helps them learn to multiply which makes math easy because it allows the student to count quickly.  Math is a whole lot easier when you can multiply because it allows you to divide and discover patterns and a whole lot more. Problem solving and fractions are much more difficult  when the student can't do simple computation. Addends are the basic building block. Gets the kids off their fingers, makes addition a snap...also builds confidence. He built walls of 10 on down to 5 and made a little fort.

I think you can guess what comes next. Knocking them down is the most fun...why not use a nerf gun? We're just playing and having fun while we learn math. Kids will often build walls or set up addends over and over again so they can shoot them down...I wish I had video. That gun couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. LOL!

Okay, fort destroyed, clean up and on to some algebra where we played what completes the square...

Here he is putting 25 in the corner, to complete x² + 10x + ___, he had started from x² + 2x + __, then x² + 4x + __, x² + 6x + __, x² + 8x + __. Again the algebra is along for the ride, he is getting lessons in addends, square numbers and dividing by two...not memorizing formulas involving b/2a...when the time comes though those formulas will make sense...

***
Now onto his brother. Again we start with addends he got a lot more done faster using the tray.  The other way is "cooler" but usually takes longer. If you are playing at home time is not an issue but when you are paying 50 bucks an hour it can be. The one thing I will say about building the tower is that he gets more practice because the walls fall down and have to be rebuilt as you go...it took him a while to build the second story without knocking down the first story...each of those wall was built and repaired more than once. In the tray he does it once and moves on...

Except when he takes the tens out fo no apparent reason and had to put them back in again. AGAIN note the use of both hands because I made him do it...and reminded him verbally more than once...

He was quite proud of the finished product because it looks cool. Kids also find out that building walls out of addends are cooler to shoot at than walls all built out of the same block over and over again...

Then we factored some quadratics started small and worked our way up. First one we did was x² + 5x + 6. Here he is doing x² + 8x + 15. But what he is really doing is learning an addend for 8 and figuring out that 3 x 5 = 15. Also that 15 can be 5 threes or 3 fives...also some division concepts and as an added bonus factoring a quadratic. He is learning counting skills...just happen to be using algebra to teach them, could just as easily be using fractions. I use algebra because it is known to be HARD in kid culture so it builds confidence and self esteem in students like these who are having problems learning math at school

Now I made him get out two tens and a four and measure it with various blocks...he already tried nines...didn't come out evenly...24 is two nines and some more, three nines is too much...eights fit perfectly and he can see 3 eights is the same as 24...but with sevens 3 isn't enough and 4 is too many...and he counted out 7 x 3 = 21 and 7 x 4 =28...he wasn't wrong to get out sevens he was just getting more information and learning as he went. Soon he had eights, and sixes and fours and threes...and calculated that it would take 12 twos...quite a bit of math from just building a wall of 24...

And now he gets some base ten block battle action too. Here he is setting up 12's. Gets the addends for twelve and counts by twelves...note the use of two hands.

And then shoots the twelves.  But never did hit one with that gun. Got a nerf pistol out and made quite a few hits. Kids will usually make more targets and shoot them down over and over again which requires building them over and over again. Tom Sawyer taught me well. SO much more fun than doing a work sheet adding little numbers together. Plus you get fine motor skills AND a whole brain activity instead of just using the dominant writing hand. Here is an article that provides a clue.

"Mathematics may be defined as the economy of counting. There is no problem in the whole of mathematics which cannot be solved by direct counting." ~Ernst Mach

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Base 10 Block Book for Preschoolers & Kindergarteners.

There aren't a whole lot of base ten block books like this out there. This one is designed for young kids. The idea is you read it to them at bedtime just like any other story book. If you have children that are a little older, 2nd or 3rd grade they could read it to themselves. If you have children older than that check out this blog and website for lots of instruction using base ten blocks to make math EZ! If little kids can do it your highschool kids can too.

Now you can get this content packed base ten block e-book: Crewton Ramones Completely Cool Curious Counters' Kindergarten Compendium for just $19.99. No need to buy a password (if you already have a password this book comes with, just go HERE and click on the picture or the big red "here.") If you don't, get this book and start learning math NOW.

No need to buy a password,  now you can get the book all by itself, I'll send you the file direct to your inbox. Until now this base ten book was only available if you bought a password. now you can get this book by itself.  Put it on your laptop, tablet, or reader or print it out.

As you can see it shows your younger children some crucial math concepts using base 10 blocks to make it easy. It helps you help them master their addition facts, introduces square roots, place value, multiplication and more. Give your child a head start in mathematics. This book makes understanding math concepts fast and easy. Mathematics is the gateway to scholarships, the sciences, and higher paying jobs. Get them started off right.

Read your children this book the way you would any other children's book except with this book they will learn math because base ten blocks make it visually obvious. For ages 9 and under but especially aimed at children ages 3 to 5. That's right PRESCHOOL, (even though it says kindergarten). They can see the math...take a look for yourself...and at this age you can read it to them over and over again. 

Just like any language they aren't going to learn it all the first time you read it to them. They aren't going understand it all the first time but after a very few short weeks the concepts in this book will be understood because it's simply written, it almost rhymes, and it's full of pictures of base ten blocks, the same way any picture book for toddlers is.

Plenty of brightly colored fun pictures explain basic math concepts, that will put your kid well ahead of their peers when they get to kindergarten or preschool. Kids that can do even just a little math at an early age are considered SMART or advanced or even geniuses whether they are or not...but one thing people have noticed over the years is that if you treat kids like they are smart they will act like they are smart. If you put kids in a class known to be advanced they will usually live up to the expectations...the opposite is also true. Put then a class in SPED or the "F Troop" they will often live up (or down) to the lowered expectations.

I have been in plenty of second grade classrooms where many of the students don't know their addends for ten without thinking about it or using their fingers. Some of these kids have to think about it when asked what does five need to be ten?! Base ten blocks help get them off their fingers and into math.

Or how many left if you take three out of nine...? This book will ensure your kid isn't one of them. Basics like this can handicap your children for life. That's no exaggeration. At the other end of the spectrum getting them off on the right foot can give them advantages for the rest of their lives...

So yeah, it's kind of important. And it has been my experience that even if they hit third grade and they don't know their addends teachers don't usually take these kids aside and give them the extra help and time they need to master them. A downward spiral often ensues as these children never learn to add single digit numbers easily, then adding them over and over again (multiplication) becomes difficult and then they try to circumvent this with memorization of multiplication tables via worksheet and flash cards. Then long division is HARD and hated, fractions are poorly understood and mathematics in general becomes PAIN. Sound familiar? Statistically more of you had a poor experience with math than a good one which is usually part of the reason you found your way here.

The homeschool market is growing by leaps and bounds and many of those parents HATE MATH, but are smart enough to understand they need break the cycle...but don't really know how. Plenty of homeschool moms know they suck at math and are concerned they won't be able to teach their children math because they can't do math...well I'm here to show how you can both learn math together. This book is a good start. Lots of teachers are also using this book to help them introduce math to their young students.

This book

Makes math fast, fun and EZ.

Concept based.
Builds a firm foundation in addition facts.
Shows them how to add numbers with ease.
Gives a leg up on Addition/Addends

Introduces Square Roots

Problem Solving

Place Value

Multiplication

Here are some responses from parents. If you already have your copy please put some comments in the comments box either for facebook or here on blogger below. 

“My kids love this book.”

“Added to our bedtime stories, now they ask for it!”
“I like it because it makes math easy for them to understand because they can see it.”
“We started out counting and before you know it he was doing some pretty impressive math for a 5 year old.”

More pics and stuff:

Crewton Ramone's Completely Cool Curious Counters' Kindergarten Compendium at the house of math. If you click this link you'll need a password to get it...remember the book is included with a password this page was built for those who just want the book. 

Crewton Ramone's Completely Cool Curious Counters' Kindergarten Compendium here on blogger. Again this page will direct you to a password protected page. If you just want the book order below. Please allow up to 12 hours for delivery...I will email you the actual pdf.  The email you use for paypal is the email I will use unless otherwise specified. No messing with pop ups or download buttons unless you want to. [Haven't built the pop up page yet so...] But you will have to check your email...if you want to me to send it to an email other than the one you used for paypal put in the box.

PDF Prices

CCCCC $19.99 USD SSS Prinable $9.99 USD DDnDD $19.99 USD PDF Page Only $39.99 USD

Here is a short explanation of the options. Remember if you have a Life Time Pass, the book is INCLUDED, this page was built by request for those that just want the book and only the book...but of course I added extra options to the button just in case you decided to do a little math and figure out getting the book by itself might not be the best option.  Also by now there are people who have gotten an annual password two or more times...and every time they get a new one there's even more stuff than the last time...and their kids are still little. Probably should have gotten a lifetime pass. This button will change soon because the $15.00 price for the PT training is limited to the first 50 paid.

...OF COURSE WITH THE LIFETIME PASS YOU GET BOTH PASSWORDS.


Learn to use your base ten blocks.