So I haven't posted that video yet, but it is still on my list.  However, just to prove the point of all previous posts........

This morning I was working with a just turned 3 year old on math.  When we finished her 10 minute play time she kept playing with the Mortensen blocks. We were using the numberal ID tray, and she had been building 10's. Anyway, out of no where she asks me where her six block would fit. She was trying to place it in the tray, but there was already a six block in the tray. So I told her to put it in 7 slot. She started to cry and said then there would be space left over. So I told her to remove her six and place the six she had in her hand into the tray. She didn't want to do that. And then she blurts out, "Are you saying that all the sixes are the same? They can never be a seven?" I told her that if the six wants to go to the seven party she has to take a one along. Then her light bulb switches on and she says, "So, all the threes are the same, and all the nines are the same and all the fives are the same?" Yes, I say. She spent the next 20 minutes lining up the blocks just to see if they were the same. She then runs into the kitchen and shouts, it's true. It really is true.

Now, if you would have asked me this morning before we did math if she understood quantity and same I would have told you yes. She gets one to one correspondence. She has been adding numbers to ten and we have been putting the blocks together and lining them up to make squares. Which means the numbers must be same. It would never have occurred to me there was anything she didn't understand. I knew we needed to keep playing with numeral identification but I thought we were just doing it to make it second nature, not because there was something completely off in her understanding. This is why Ray's has you working on numbers as they do for several years.  Point was driven home again.

Crewton just posted these on his blog and thought I'd post them here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_uHjHwWfZc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYbD6PJYCqs


He does't have those trays available, but I think they could be made on paper  with rectangles and a whole bunch of designs could be made. I know Mortensen doesn't have as many products as they used to.

EDIT: Does anyone know how to embed video. It used to be you just copy and pasted. Obviously that is no longer the case.

http://www.crewtonramoneshouseofmath.com/Curriculum-Starter-Kit.html 

He has a video there that explains everything in the Crewton Ramone combo kit. Geoff White is not Mortensen, is another guy like Crewton Ramone only he is located in Asia somewhere. But those two are the only ones who can get you Mortensen stuff. Kinda strange I think, but that is likely why none of us have ever heard of Mortensen Math before. And I suspect the problems with Mortensen is why the guy left and founded Math-U-See.

All you NEED is a combo kit (big set of blocks) and a password to his site. And you don't even NEED at password to start as there are over 400 videos that are free. I would watch video and then get the parent/teacher training.

All the blocks are plastic. There is a set of fractions overlays which are clear plastic with hard cardstock that goes underneath - have those. And there is also another basic operations set which I don't have. Those are hard plastic as well. Nothing is paper but the books. And you don't need the books, if you can find them cheap do it. I read somewhere that is making his own but they aren't necessary as this is primarily verbal math for a long time.

Edit:    this is the product page with a video explaining the parts and pieces and how to order them: http://www.crewtonramoneshouseofmath.com/product-exchange.html

We have not done squares and playdough. We started to "build squares" almost immediately. How many 5 blocks does it take to make a square? What happens if we use 6 five blocks? It is not a square anymore. And how many two blocks to make a square? What happens if we use 4 two blocks?   They will figure out on their own that you need 2 two blocks, 3 three blocks, etc. to make squares. And then from there we moved into square roots. Which means that all sides are the same so we have to only count one side. That part is easy because they don't have to count, they can just look and know. 

For skip counting we have been watching School House Rock because I grew up with it. We use Grammar Rock and America Rock also.  Then I found this http://www.songsforchildren.org/multiplication-and-skip-counting-songs/ . I got Multiplication Motivation from the library, the songs are tolerable but for background music we have been listening to Victor Johnson. However, I am pretty sure that School House Rock has been the key.

I also have https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALHMVJIAHhM   This helps with learning the multiplication table straight, but doesn't help with skip counting and understanding the tables.  However, we have found this to be quick and fun. There are other kinds of things like this. The reason we chose this product is that there is no story, it is just a short rhyme. I didn't get the big book just the printables, flash cards (free) and songs from Teachers Pay Teachers. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Multiplication-Printables-to-learn-the-Times-Tables-with-Times-To-Remember-373782    Songs and coloring pages together is $12 or something close to it.   

When everyone has blocks we will put together some international skype math. I am looking forward to it. If anyone else wants to join, just chime in.

Marialuisa,

I had seen this video before and forgot how wonderful it is. She is so delightful, how is she doing now? This video is several years old. I remember watching it when my son was just a little over a year old. It was very encouraging to me. Thanks for reposting and reminding those who are just coming fresh to EL that it really is possible. My son is reading at about middle to end of first grade. It is not likely he will be as good as your daughter was even a year from now. But I expect a year from now he will be at least 2-3 grade reading level. Your daughter has such great expression and fluency. Lovely!

That is great! What a better way to do addends instead of worksheets. Walls are way cooler mom. And if you get a matchbox car they are great fun to knock down! And then you have to rebuild it and practice them all over again.

You know, I was talking to a couple other moms, one from Africa and one from Romania, it would be a ton of fun if we did math occasionally together. We can do it by gmail video chat or by skype. How cool would that be? Because this is not workbook oriented but mostly oral work, it can be done with kids of all ages. I am just tossing that out into the wind.....    If you got the password, somewhere on the PDF page is a book of mortensen games to play. It is worth finding and reading. The kids really do like playing what's under the cup. This morning we played what's under the cup and Philip's equations was    x + 2 = (squareroot) 25. I had the 3 under the cup.  He will work and it and think or try to steal the cup and peek but that is half the fun. I wish I would have gotten it on video because it was cute. He was skip counting and having a blast. He had to work through the difference between the square and square root. Which is which? I would have never even considered doing this with my toddler, who has the attention span of a knat. He can barely sit still,  it is an huge effort for him. You can see in the video he went from what is under the cup to he needed a peg leg because a crocodile ate his leg and it was bleeding. It wasn't even two seconds......

How are you using the book? We read it a couple times and then did what is on each page. That took us s few days.

]We just uploaded this last night. We are working on block identification. As you can see he knows what they are, but we want to keep working on it till he doesn't have to think about it anymore. He likes counting and has no trouble with one to one correspondence but he still enjoys counting the blocks to make sure.  The thing I like about Mortensen is that the kids work with the numbers so much, in play and touch and you are covering basically all elementary math and first year algebra at the same time for several years. It becomes clear as you spend time working with the kids how this works.  The math isn't something they have memorized, but something they internalize.  I am going to try to get video today as he is skip counting and making squares and factoring equations with the help of Hunkey Monkey,  who really has a hard time with counting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2B8aXsJFrs&list=UUFx6wePKA5GUm1637fUpKTw

This will be the last post  and then I will post a video to explain some things.  If you have the ability to read these posts and understand them,  congratulations. I don't go back and fix typos or grammar, I tend to put periods and commas in when my fingers stop typing and I usually have at least one child climbing on me.

When it comes to early learning, much depends on the teacher. If the teacher is a poor teacher the student will not be a success. Babies/toddlers haven't developed the kind of language skills that are necessary for even basic explanations.  Some parents are intuitive at how to reach their little ones and some are not. One thing I learned well from John Mighton of Jump Math is that if there is a problem assume it is  the teacher. We aren't doing our job. That is well and good and all, but most people aren't teaching math to toddlers so there aren't and books on how to go about this. We are laying a new foundation. On top of that, most of us come with our own math baggage. When I was in school things came fairly easily to me. I didn't have to work hard. So, I it is difficult for me to break concepts down to smaller and smaller bites. I am guilty of giving too much at a time. 

If math language could be confusing for 6 and 7 year olds 120 years ago, when math education was significantly better, how much more so for 3 and 4 year olds. On top of that we have the added burden of parents who sit down with their little sweetums carrying their own math baggage. This will take patience.

I read recently that we shouldn't use manipulatives because math is an abstraction and kids need to learn to think in abstractions. The problem is that until a child is somewhere around 10-11 s/he is unable to deal with absolute abstractions. Until then a child is just learning to think symbolically but still requires concrete examples for understanding. Are there some kids where this is not true? Sure. And are there things you can do  to hurry these stages along? Maybe. But I am not sure you need to. Obviously kids can learn abstractions. We teach children to read and that is a compete abstraction. The difference is that written words have a reference point in the spoken word. And they use the spoken word to navigate the world around them everyday. And even LR doesn't start out with words like:  was, not, busy, fast. It starts out with words that refer to concrete things in a childs life that are also important to the child. Kick, ball, dog.  We show an image of the word and then picture and then a video in some cases, so the child has a reference point to things that he knows. There are few such reference points in math at the age of 3. One and two are easy. They get that. Beyond one and two things a get a little harder to understand.

By the age of 4 most kids, EL kids or not, can start to handle some math work. One to one correspondence shouldn't be an issue for most kids by then. And they have likely discovered money which seems to be a point of no return. The big issue is getting littler kids to do math and even whether you want to push it. And if we answer yes we want our toddlers to do math, the next question is what do you want out of it. Are you interested in just teaching rote memorization or are you looking for your children to really understand numbers and what they mean. There are some parents on these boards who have take the memorization route and some who have gone the "number sense/understanding" route.  I'm a both/and. It isn't necessary to chose between the two.

I am going to post a video next that will examine some of the problems I presented and how I have addressed them. And how we are moving ahead. For us, moving ahead is the exciting part. Math went from being THE most stressful subject for both EL and homeschooling to one of my favorites. Literature is still at the top, but it is getting harder and harder to choose as we have become a literature/math/music/history/nature study family.

One of the best books I read early on when teaching math as an EL subject was Kitchen Table Math. The reason the book was so good is not so much that it prepared me to make my child a math wiz, but helped me understand the hurdles children have to overcome in order to grasp what is going on. It is way more than you realize and on top of that, the places where a child can get confused is likely infinite. Maybe that's an exaggeration. but probably not by much. So in the early years - 2-3.5, every child is going to be different and you have to wait for stuff to " just click".

When I made the subitizing LR file, the impetus for that was reading about Moshi Kai. He remembers that the concept of a number finally clicked for him when his mother showed him 1 lion and then 2 lions and then 3 lions. She did not count items consecutively, she showed him groups of things and gave those things numerical meaning.  This idea shows up in the Manual of Methods which is the Teachers Manual for the 19th century set of school books in the Eclectic Education Series. The Ray's Arithemetic recommends that you:

1. Never show a child the numerical symbols until they are very comfortable with the concept of what the number means. For example: the number 7 is taught using manipulatives. The child should recognize 7 as  7 beans, 1 bean and 6 beans, 2 beans and 5 beans, and 3 beans and 4 beans or whatever manipulatives you are working with.  1- 10 are taught this way.

2.  All math is oral until 2nd or 3rd grade. So the use of symbolic representation doesn't show up for some time as the symbols themselves can cause further confusion.

3. Children who are learning to write should also not be forced to do sums. It takes up too much mental power. Therefore there is no written work until a child is comfortable with both writing and mental math.

Now this set of books, which is really skimpy compared to what you are used to, is small. Math is only done for 15-20 minutes a day. And when kids dropped out of school at the end of 8th grade they were capable of running a business, calculate and understand interest, manage the amount of seed needed to plant fields. In other words far more capable than most of us are even after college math.

One of the other problems with counting and touching things as you count is that the child gets the idea that the last item counted is the number instead of all the items in the group. So let's say I have 5 raisins and we count them one at a time and slide the raisin across the placemat as we do so. When the child gets to the 5th one he will think that is 5.  He assumes that you mean that raisin right there is 5. And there is nothing to distinguish a 3 from a 5 in that context.  So the counting hasn't helped any but rather added confusion.

These are just some of the ways a child can get confused and each child may have areas of confusion that are unique to that child. But since there are some that are very common like the child assuming that counting means touching stuff and saying numbers, we want to make it as easy for the child to succeed. And so we take out as many variables as we can. So if I were starting out with a 2-4 year old, I would make sure that the counting occurred in groups. So I would have a group of 1, and then 2, and then 3 and then 4 and then 5 raisins. Etc. And then line them up in rows with each row one longer than the previous one. And then count the groups. So you would touch the group of one and say "one" and then touch the group of two and say "two" and so on.

And an easy way to work on one to one correspondence is just have your daughter help you set the table. Do you have 4 in your family? Tell her you need 4 plates and 4 glasses. Etc. Then have her put one of each at in the right place. She will need help with this the first few times. But she will get it.

One last thing to encourage you. On one of Crewton Ramone's teaching videos he says that if you can speak English you can do math. English is much harder. He's probably right - but I didn't always believe that.  I take care of a little girl with Down Syndrome. She turns 6 tomorrow. She is working on some fairly advanced math for her age. She is multiplying, adding and subtracting, and doing algebra and squares and square roots. She is not struggling and she is having a lot of fun. Her biggest issue, which is her issue with all the things we do, is the fine motor skills. That is going to take way longer to address than math.  She knows what squares and the roots mean. When I told her that when we play with squares some people think that is very hard. I told her that when she finds the number of one side, that is called a square root. And finding square roots is really hard for some people. Her response was terrific: "You kidding me."

Instead of waiting and doing this in one fell swoop, I will do it in parts as I have time.

1. If you are having difficulty with math and are frightened the BEST place I can send you is to Crewton Ramone's House of Math. I posted some stuff about him under the current Mortensen Math thread. It is not organized. That is fine. Just start clicking around.  I attached a math blocks template you can print out and follow along if you don't have blocks. Which I assume you don't.

2. If math really does make you upset, start there. Your daughter will sense your fear and assume it as her own. So, first get over that hurdle. I promise you, a few hours watching video over  at crewtonramoneshouseofmath.com and you will come away with all of the following reactions and maybe all at once: relief, joy, confidence, and anger. The anger comes in when you realize that it doesn't have to be that hard. None of it is very hard. Really. None of it.  Trig, calc, fractions, multiplication - it is all very easy once you know what it is you are doing.

3. Don't worry about counting so much as you want to make sure that she understands that numbers mean quantity.  I made this file to help my kidlets do just that. It doesn't have words with it, but you can tell her what she is looking at. Like 5 birds, 5 cows, 5 on the tally sticks, 5 on a dice, the word five. etc. http://library.brillkids.com/download.php?cid=1&tid=&lid=&fid=9121

If I were starting over with a baby, which I am I now have a 6 week old in my care, I would do things differently than I did before. But that is great thing about EL. It isn't going to hurt them and you learn a lot.  I have spent hours and hours and hours thinking about this. I am fairly comfortable with all areas of teaching now, but math has always been a stickler for us. You will find pockets of people doing a good job, but it doesn't work well with every child. There are real reasons for that . It has to do with how we think and when we are able to grasp certain ideas. So, after tons and tons of reading and research I have a much better idea of what needs to happen to get a child to grasp math. And honestly , it is not all that different that what we are doing for reading. Really. We just haven't done a good job of applying the principles across the board. I will continue to post here as I have time. But please go check out Crewton Ramone. You won't be sorry.

@ Velvet,

I don't really have time to address all the things you brought up right now, but there are a ton of hurdles kids must overcome before they can do math. Some kids are bright and early, and some kids are not. Some kids think counting means touching things and saying numbers. They don't get what you mean when you ask them to count. One to one correspondence usually shows up between ages 2- 4 1/2. You can't make it happen. It is something that you have to wait for. You can do things to facilitate it but other than that, it is a waiting game. She will not get counting on until she gets what you are asking her to do. Most kids can recognizes quantities up to 3, beyond that it is very difficult unless it shows up in consistent pattern. Doman math doesn't work for everyone. Just as the reading doesn't either. Reading has worked for us to different degrees with each child. Math has never worked, but that may be because I haven't stuck with it.  She is not outside the bounds of normal development yet. So don't worry. 

There are some old threads on here that discuss these issues in detail.  Do a search for Marshmallow math and Kitchen Table Math and you will find the threads. But  if we bump this thread there are some experienced parents that I'm sure would love to assist you. And I will try to get back to this by the end of the week.

Julia,

If you want it, go ahead and get it. I won't bid against you. I have enough blocks for now and it seems every week or two they show up on ebay cheap. But I do plan to get more. That set is probably worth $500-$600, maybe more I don't know. Remember that when bidding. If it is out of your price range at the end of the week let me know so I can decide if I want it.

FLKL,

I am very interested in how your kids are doing. One of the things that happened and really cemented this in my own mind was my 4 year old. He had out a tens block and was placing ones on top of it. I asked how many ones he needed to make a 10. He didn't know. I was shocked. He can work with addends in his head. He knows addition and subtraction up to ten without an problem. He knows that 6 is 5 and 1, 4 and 2, 3 and 3 and 10 minus 4, etc. Still, it wasn't obvious to him. And as I've gone through the training and watched a ton of video, it becomes painfully clear how much I missed. I've watched many videos and said, "Oh, that is what we are doing!!!! Now I get it!" In math, if you miss a step or it gets confused, it may not make a difference now, but it is going to show up at some point and you will get stuck. I have spent a month getting unstuck and having a ton of fun doing it.

I have a password for the teacher training and the site. Here is my current thoughts on it:  You don't need a password, but it is worth the price and it is so cheap it is embarrassing for what you get. However, Crewton states that you should go through the free stuff first. And that is probably true to some degree. If you've watched a ton of video and are ready to take the plunge into more stuff, I'd at least do the parent/teacher training. I have watched all the available ones twice. Some more than that. It really does help you get what you should be doing.

I am going to cheat, since you are already using the program and tell you some of it. If you haven't looked up the five principles behind Mortensen, then do a google search for Crewton Ramone 5 principles. They should guide you as you work with your kids. And the other thing that is HUGE is getting the NO out of the lesson. That has helped me a lot. And at this age, you are teaching them to count. And you are using Algebra and multiplication as a means to teach counting. We want them to count and count quickly. I can't do this justice at all. I am tempted to ask if he would do a webinar for us. But, I'm not sure it is necessary if you do the teacher training. Really.

The Crewton Ramone's Curious Counters Kindergarten Compendium is worth $2.99. But then if you do that you might as well buy a password for the site. I read it to the kids a couple times and then pulled out the blocks and we went through it.  It is less than 60 pages and in that space, you really do go from the introduction of the blocks and through nearly all of elementary math with some Algebra to boot. Any 4 year old can do it. We are still reading it. 

As far as video, you can let your kids watch them, but from what I gather so far, this is not something that Jerry Mortensen nor Crewton Ramone recommend. It takes the "Aha!" moments away from them. That is why the video is geared for parents. So, if you are looking for it, you aren't going to find it. I did find some basic Mortensen videos on youtube. They are older and the kids can watch those.  https://www.youtube.com/user/RealLoveSong/videos?sort=dd&view=0&shelf_id=0  not all of them are for kids. There are some others besides these but this is a good place to start.

Posted on his facebook page that there are about a dozen training passwords left at  $15. Just thought I'd pass it along.

https://www.facebook.com/Crewton.Ramone?fref=nf

EDIT: Found this on ebay today:

 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mortensen-Math-More-than-Math-Multiplication-Fact-Tray-Fraction-Kit-and-more-/321543150521?pt=Educational_Toys_US&hash=item4add771bb9

That is a ton of stuff. If someone here wants it let me know, I won't bid against you. But otherwise I am going to bid on it. I have 4 kids who will be using this. I want to build my collection.

BTW- you don't need the workbooks. But they aren't bad to have around.

Just a note about the cost of the "plastic blocks" for you to think about. If you are convinced that you can use this program and it works for your kids, the cost of those plastic blocks really isn't that much. They are high quality blocks. I picked up two partial sets, one with the tray an one without. They are close to 30 years old. I know because I have the flesh colored negative 10 blocks which aren't made anymore. You will be using these blocks for years to come.  And if you can either come up with a stop gap till you can purchase or find a real set (like paper or used cuisenaire rods, which aren't perfect, but doable) as you really do want the tray with it, you will not regret the purchase.

While I would love to tell you that this is for just my kids, it is not. It is for me. I sat down with the videos and learned the math I should have learned in high school.  He has a quote on the homepage that reads "I cried when I watched your video...." that was me. And not only did I cry because I finally got it, I cried because I didn't get it when my first child was young.  And it is too late to take those years back. You can do a search as I have been very frank on here about my oldest son's homeschooling and math. And the scars that left in our relationship. And this experience is not unique to my family. So I think $90 is cheap. But, I didn't pay $90. I paid $40 and have a lot more blocks. And I suspect these will last long enough for me to hand the down to my grandkids.


EDIT: That quote isn't really from me. Just that I did cry when I went through the site.

This is so funny. I haven't been on the BK boards for many months, our lives became very hectic right around February this year. We have been slowly plugging away and putting things to right. I stopped by just to post about Mortensen Math via Crewton Ramones House of Math.I have been using it for a little less than a month now and would be glad to answer any questions you have - as best I can that is. The following is what I was planning to post in a new thread but since this one has already been opened I will post it here:

I just wanted to let everyone know that we finally did pick a math program for the kids and why we picked it.
 
Most of the math curricula available is good at something. Some programs obviously work better than others. Until now, I felt like we were settling. I can go through the list of stuff I like in different programs,  but I am not the kind of person to use 20 different things to get the job done. I have too many kids at home, and we are early educating them all. Most of this stuff just ends up on a shelf collecting dust. Since I prefer to operate on principles rather than on strict lesson plans, what I have been looking for is a “how to do this, and still get your kid to love math”. I am not a great teacher, so I need really good tools.

Last spring I ordered the Jump Math workbook for 1st grade, thumbed through it and realized my kids had already mastered most of the book. We got to that point by playing games, playing with numbers and making it fun. So I just decided that was how I intended to “do math” for the next few years. Play games. Games like Muggins and Mathino, which you can make very easy or very difficult.  I didn't think my wish list for a math program was possible. I don’t think it is asking THAT much:

1.   I want a program that is consistent with the principles guiding all of my homeschooling. I don’t want my children to just understand English, I want them to love it. We do not study English so my kids can get a good job. We study it because it is beautiful. And because the kids love it, they are also likely to be able to use it well. Shakespeare is infinitely more hire-able than “You want some fries with them there burgers?” So, first and foremost we study math because it is beautiful. I have yet to find a math program that displays the beauty of math. Vedic Math is beautiful, but it is not complete. And there is still no way to teach that to little children. Jump Math is closer to getting there.

2.   Ideally, I want something I can use for the next 4-13 years. I would like 13 but that is pushing it. I know.

3.   It needs to be easy to teach because I am the teacher.

4.   I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars. I have already spent tons of money over the last 13 years looking for the right math program and using a lot of them. And there are programs that cost $100-$200 a year. Or are short lived. So you spend $200 now and then in another 2 years the kids outgrow it and you have to drop another $100 on something else. That is also why I put Jump Math at the top of my “math list”.

5.   In the Vedic system of math, you get to know the numbers. After a while you understand how they behave with different operations. Arthur Benjamin uses many Vedic Math principles and had developed some of his own. That is because he has gotten to “know” the numbers and “see” how they work. I want my kids to “know numbers”.

6.   I would like the kids to be able to do “real math” not just computation. And at 3 and 4, I still want this to be like playing games and having fun. Much the same way they learned to read.

7.   We have to be able to do it without writing. This one should really be listed at the top.

This is a lot to ask of a program. I had given up thinking I would find one. And I am NOT going to mix and match programs. I don’t have enough time in the day for this. I will just drop all of it, for being overwhelmed. Then I found Mortensen Math. Not just Mortensen Math, but Mortensen Math via Crewton Ramone. He is a 24 year master trainer with Mortensen.  I don’t know how I first found the program. But I was hooked when I saw his barely graduated from toddlerhood kids factoring equations. I have spent about 30 hours on the site, I bought a password, and have completed all of the teacher training available.

You’ll notice similarities between Math-U-See and Mortensen because the guy who created Math-U-See also worked for Mortensen, and it is sort of like Mortensen, but as far as I can tell has sucked all the joy and beauty out of what Jerry Mortensen created.

I was going to wait to post this until I had some good footage of the kids and what we are doing, and then Crewton posted on his blog that the teacher training is going up and I wanted to let everyone here know about it first. The training is $15. And he is putting up 10 hours of it. For $45 you can get a 2 hour webinar with Jump Math. I am not knocking Jump, I like Jump and think their training is cheap as well. But this is a steal.

My suggestion is that if you are interested, go look around at his site.  Do a youtube search on Crewton Ramone: there is only one. And if you like it, don’t wait, get the teacher training. It is going up to $49 soon. And then $79 and then $299. This is the only way that seems feasible to teach 2-4 years olds math. Well, Ella and a few others don’t count. For the rest of us who have real kids and don’t feel comfortable teaching it, this is for you. He will teach you not just how the program works but how to teach it.

What must your kids be able to do before you start?
1. Count to 9. (Though he can help with that.)
2. Tell if things are same of different.
3. Recognize a rectangle.

The videos that got me hooked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFVnzDiYW1Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeGKmrPnenM

Word of caution: For those of you who want things neat and tidy, his website is going to make you squirm. However, if you had a bad math education, just start clicking through videos. It will clear up a ton of math in your own head. And after awhile you will get a hang of what he is doing. And I did hear through the grapevine that his plan is to make a subscription site with all the stuff organized. How soon that will be?  I have no idea. Also, he is very plain spoken and may come off as offensive to some. It would be terrible if you let that get in the way. You won’t find this anywhere else. No one is teaching like this. And it only takes a few youtube searches to see how his boys have developed. You can watch them do trig and factor equations in their heads when they are 7 and 8.

One more issue:  Crewton Ramone does not work with Mortensen anymore. And if you get the Mortensen blocks new you may have to wait awhile to get them - like 6-8 weeks. You can use Math-U-See; I have a set. You can pick some up on ebay cheap. We have both sets of blocks. Math-U-See and Mortensen. I bought the Mortensen on ebay. It took about 2 weeks to get what I wanted. Anyway, the Mortensen blocks are much better blocks. They feel like Legos in your hand. The Math-U-See ones are made of a softer plastic. You will notice, in the last video, his boys building stuff out of the blocks.  That won’t happen with the Math-U-See blocks. Or at least it doesn’t happen with ours. The blocks warp, don’t stick together well and the towers fall down. This is very frustrating to 3 and 4 year olds. But if that is what you have, by all means use them. Don’t wait to start just because you don’t have the right blocks.  You can even use Cuisenaire rods. And I have a template I made for paper ones to use before we got our blocks. If you want it, I will gladly give it to you.

http://www.crewtonramoneshouseofmath.com/

teacher training http://www.crewtonramoneshouseofmath.com/parents-teachers.html

How is it working for us? The little girl that I care for who has Down Syndrome understands and is working on squares and square roots. She is still 5.  Today, we were working on some simple algebra. She factored very quickly x2 + 4x+3,  but she had a bit of trouble making a rectangle and needed help. My four year old still has difficulty sitting, so he builds towers and knocks them over. What is he doing while playing smash the cars? Addends. He is getting pretty good at them.


EDIT: that is supposed to be x squared, but the superscript didn't come through.