MommyTeaching.com

A Stimulating Activity That Sharpens Math Skills: Drawing Math

July 21, 2011

Some activities are never perceived by our children as relating to math because their experiences are typically geared towards paper and pencil math. I try to remind my friends and family that there are two facets to math: the instrumental or procedural math and the relational or real life math. It’s easy to incorporate bits of relational math in activities without them even realizing they are doing it! Here is an example of one of those activities:

Procedure:

1. First, I found a picture to be drawn. The difficulty level of the picture should correspond to children’s age and cognitive abilities. The picture shown above was slightly too difficult for my seven-year old daughter, but I helped her a little with the location of the petals.
2. Then, I cut the picture down to make a square.
3. In order to make the grid, I found it easiest to fold the paper horizontally and vertically that way all the squares were congruent ..
4. Next, I used a marker to draw lines over the folds.
5. Using a blank sheet of paper the same size as the picture, I followed the same procedure to create an identical but blank grid.

 I showed my daughter how to find corresponding boxes and helped her draw and color-in identical pictures. Reese loves coloring, and was so impressed with her own ability to mimick the beautiful flower painting, that she had no idea she was learning relational mathematics!