Back in the day, before Harper came along, I was a kindergarten teacher.  I like to think I was a pretty good one too.  I poured myself, time and energy into my kiddos…they were my life.  I was there way before school started and stayed late into the night.  That time in my life seems so long ago now.

Every now and then I get to use my teachery skills….teachery is a real word…and I get taken back to my little classroom.  Some of you may already know this little math trick, but when I was doing it with Harper, I thought it might be helpful to some of you out there in the inter webs.

Harper had some math problems to do last week.  She was doing fine with it, but I noticed she was having a hard time with all her little fingers and my pipe cleaner/bead math tool came rushing back.  So here’s what you do…take a pipe cleaner and string some beads on it…however many your kiddo will need to do their math problems…then bend the ends so the beads won’t slide off.  Easy enough right?

This is so darn easy and makes math very organized and shows kids visually the adding to or taking away from.

You start with all your beads on one side of the pipe cleaner and lets say, oh, your problem is 5+2…

Your kiddo pushes 5 beads over to the opposite side…

then pushes 2 more over…

And voila…5+2=7

Now for subtraction…let’s go out on a limb and just say perhaps your subtraction problem is 8-3…

Same as before, your kiddo pushes 8 beads over to the opposite side…

then because it’s subtraction, they will drag 3 beads away from their 8…

And again, voila, 8-3=5

Easy and organized.  Now Harper keeps this in her desk and anytime she needs a little help with her math…Boom…there it is.

There you have it.  Just a little trick you may or may not already know, but thought I’d share.

Hope your week is going good.  Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Tuesday.

PS:  Fun little giveaway tomorrow.