Yes, we are still using Life of Fred Maths, because the girls remember it! It’s that simple. That said, as they are also doing the ACE program in its entirety, it also means they are getting stacks of maths practice. Something they are not too enamoured by! The girls are resolutely and uncompromisingly not fans of ACE Maths! I don’t want them to lose their love for maths, so I am continuing with Life of Fred. They like Life of Fred. This week was all about Life of Fred: Edgewood.
Before going on to the next book I always have the girls redo the activity booklet from the book before, in this case ‘Dogs’ I make these myself and they are free to download and print. I focus on one or two of the main (new) topics in each book. I have written a post about these printables here:
With each new book I pre-read and pick out some focal topics, and plan our Freddy maths around those topics. For our current book, Edgewood, I focused on Median average, quadrilaterals, concurrent and parallel lines and bar graphs:
Life of Fred: Edgewood – Median Average
The median average is when the values of whatever it is one wants to find the average of are placed in order, from high to low. The value which is bang in the middle is known as the median average.
Chocolate always seems to attract young mathematicians in their droves, so is always sensible when introducing a new topic. M ‘n’ Ms are particularly useful on account of their colours. And they have a nut in them, so not too unhealthy, right?
First, the girls separated them out into colours:
Then, they pointed to the piles they believed held the most amount of M’n’Ms:
They counted and labeled them:
Next, they ordered them into piles of small numbers to large numbers:
The median average is found by finding the piule in the middle. In this case piles, red and green, which helpfully had seventeen in each.
As already noted, the median average is the middle, so the girls now lined them up smallest to largest:
And began removing them one at a time from each end:
They wanted to check that the middle sweet was in fact either red or green:
And it was! Yay!
Life of Fred: Edgewood – Geometry
As a fun introduction to geometry, I had Abs read ‘Mummy Math’ to her sister:
Afterwards, they focused their attentions on quadrilaterals.
Life of Fred: Edgewood – Quadrilaterals
Our ‘Dive into Shapes’ maths manipulative never gets old and the girls are always excited to build with it:
I wanted them to build as many different quadrilaterals as they could remember:
They did really well (thank you Life of Fred):
I wrote some labels out and they labelled each of their models:
We had a bit of spare time, so before the girls ate the sweets, I had them build the quadrilaterals:
And label them. After which they could eat them:
Life of Fred: Edgewood – Concurrent Lines
I gave them a map and asked them to mark the quadrilaterals and concurrent lines they could find
They did well!
This was such a good quick activity!
Life of Fred: Edgewood – Graphs
This graph activity was simple revision for the girls. Moving away from the sweet stuff, I bought a selection of fruit and asked them to graph them in three different ways:
They chose a pictograph first, which I knew they would 🙂
I asked them some quick fire questions about the graph, which because it was so visual, they answered in double quick time:
The next was a bar graph. Again, I thought they would probably get this one as well:
I asked them questions about this one, but their answers were not quite as quick. They related more with the pictograph because it was lovely and colourful and the fruit was laid out individually, making it easier to see exactly how many of each. With the bar chart, they still were able to read it, but it wasn’t such a quick way of finding the required data:
The third one I was looking for was a line graph. They have not had too much experience with line graphs, but understood immediately:
This was a great introduction to graphs and which ones to use with what data:
