Number Bonds = Better Understanding

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Rescued from my old blog.]

number bondsA number bond is a mental picture of the relationship between a number and the parts that combine to make it. The concept of number bonds is very basic, an important foundation for understanding how numbers work. A whole thing is made up of parts. If you know the parts, you can put them together (add) to find the whole. If you know the whole and one of the parts, you take away the part you know (subtract) to find the other part.

Number bonds let children see the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction. Subtraction is not a totally different thing from addition; they are mirror images. To subtract means to figure out how much more you would have to add to get the whole thing.

Continue reading Number Bonds = Better Understanding

Hello, World!

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

My old blog over at A Home for Homeschoolers (update: a now-non-existent homeschool forum) is having technical difficulties, so I decided it’s time to experiment with something else. I’m not sure whether to try moving all the old posts over here or just to start again from scratch. I guess I’ll just play around for awhile and learn how WordPress works.

Meanwhile, let me introduce myself: I am a Christian, a wife and homemaker, and the homeschooling mother of five, ages 8yo to adult, all still living at home (though not for much longer, alas!) in the rural countryside of central Illinois. My hobbies are learning and teaching math, and reading anything I can get my hands on.

If you have questions about homeschooling or teaching math — if there’s anything about math that stumps you, or has never made sense, or you’re simply curious about — I’d love to hear from you! Contact information is on the “About Denise” page.

Why Am I Always the Straight Man?

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Rescued from my old blog.]

Teen dd looks up from her Geometry book. “Hey, Mom, guess what? I finally figured out how palm reading works.”

Now there’s a career choice I really want to encourage, right?

With some tredpidation, I ask, “Um… How?”

“When you look at your hand,” she explains, “and it’s all covered with scars, then you know it’s time to declaw the cat!”

See You Later!

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Rescued from my old blog.]

My computer just died. How frustrating! Computer-savvy ds says it probably needs a new motherboard. Blissfully computer-ignorant me doesn’t know exactly what that means, but I know enough to tell that it’s not good. I could tell by the way he shook his head and muttered, “Hmmm. Not good,” several times as he tried to get the thing to boot up.

Continue reading See You Later!

Finding the Limit

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Rescued from my old blog.]

Eldest dd had her first calculus lesson last night: derivatives. The teacher found the speed of a car at a given point by using the distance function, calculating the average speed over shorter and shorter time intervals. Dd summarized the lesson for me:

“If you want to divide by zero, you have to sneak up on it from behind.”

Of course, she understands you can’t really divide by zero, but I thought her tongue-in-cheek comment was a pretty good description of the process of finding the limit as delta-t approached zero.

Workshop Prep

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Rescued from my old blog.]

Well, here I am in the sickly, wee hours of the pre-dawn, wishing I was asleep but too hyped with stress (or caffeine) to go to bed. I’m speaking at the big state conference in just a few days, so I’m down to crunch time: tweaking explanations, adding transitions, printing out overheads, and still trying to cram in an extra topic or two.

I think I try to pack these workshops way too full of information. The un-written rule for speakers is supposed to be KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!), isn’t it? I should know that I can’t teach everything I know about a topic in a one-hour workshop, but I find myself thinking, “Oh, I almost forgot about this. They’ll need to know that; it’s important. I wonder where I can fit it in?”

I guess this puts me squarely in the “stupid” category.

Continue reading Workshop Prep

Kids Do the Craziest Things

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Rescued from my old blog.]

My youngest daughter wanted to do Singapore math today. Miquon Red is her main math text this quarter, but we add a bit of Singapore Primary Math 1B whenever she’s in the mood. We turned to the lesson on subtracting with numbers in the 30-somethings. The first problem was pretty easy for her:

30 – 7 = []

I reminded her that she already knows 10 – 7. She agreed, “10 take away 7 is 3.” Then her eyes lit up. “So it’s 23! Because there are two tens left.”

Continue reading Kids Do the Craziest Things