math for 4 almost 5 year old

I’m not sure I know exactly what you mean by a ‘one-to-one correlation math’, but I have enjoyed working through the MEP Reception Level with my 4 and 5 year olds. http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/primary/default.htm I am also using some of the number sense games from the Right Start Math Games kit. http://www.rainbowresource.com/proddtl.php?id=041356 We’ve also done lots of counting objects and matching with the correct numeral kinds of things too.

HTH some,

Jen

I have only used the Reception Level of MEP, not any of the upper levels, so I can’t address those. (We actually use Math U See as our main math curriculum.) I really like MEP for the 4s and 5s, however, because it is light on writing – so a good fit for a child who is ready to move beyond counting and matching sorts of games but not ready for a workbook-based math curriculum yet. I went through it with my daughter during her kindergarten year (before starting her into Math U See Alpha when she was 6), and just recently started it with my son who is 4, but was definetely ready for something a little more challenging than just playing simple counting games together.

Anyhow, there are two parts you need to download – the ‘copymasters’ are the student sheets and the lesson plans are the teacher instructions that go with them. Since it was originally meant for classroom use, I do occasionally skip over sections of it that aren’t particularly applicable for the home setting. Each lesson is comprised of 2-3 activities. With my 4 year old, I usually only do 1 or sometimes 2 activities in one sitting, so a ‘lesson’ may take us 2 or 3 sessions to complete. I like to put the student sheets into plastic page protectors and let my son write on them with dry erase markers. (That way he can go back and do them again if he likes…which he does just for fun. He’s pretty tickled about having his own math book!)

So, for example, looking at the teacher’s Lesson Plan for Lesson 1, this is how I would handle it:

Activity 1 – Skipped it, this is one of those things meant for a classroom that doesn’t apply at home.

Activity 2 – We look at the picture together (the first page in the ‘copymaster’ set – it is labelled ‘Lesson Plan 1, Activities 2 and 3’ so you’ll know you have the right one.) We talk through the questions together – I help him as necessary.

Activity 3 – I see that activity 3 is fairly quick and easy, and he’s still having fun, so we go ahead and do it (otherwise, we’d quit here and do #3 next time). So, we follow the directions and draw in the right number of sticks to correspond with the number of fingers shown in the picture.

Hope that helps some,

Jen