digit magic

Even though the digits are only zero to nine,

They make up every number, each and every time.

-from "Digit Magic", Enki Education Grade 1 Movement Activity

Getting back into the swing of our curriculum, we started our our new math block with a review of the digits, via reading "The Story of the Sun Dance", a legend from the Blackfeet tribe. Here, in J's story drawing, he shows the hero of the tale, Scarface, along with one of the four sweat lodges (with 2 colors) that he built, and his 3 healers (the Sun, the Moon Woman, and Morning Star, who, by the way, has 5 points).


Zoo Boy's story drawing. (He says that Scarface is INSIDE the sweat lodge in this drawing. Makes sense to me. But he did add an earthworm -- that squiggle towards the bottom of the page -- to represent the "1".) He asked me to write his title for him, but showed me where he wanted it to go.

Today we wrote out a chart with the 10 digits -- there was a space for each numeral from 1 to 9, and I let them draw the "0" wherever they wanted it -- J's is obvious (his is the bottom sheet), Zoo Boy's is harder to see, it's in the margin above the 2. We then discussed the fact that these digits are the only digits there are, and that every number in the world is made up of these 10 digits. We did a few of the rhymes and movement activities from our first Math Block as well, as a review and to help "reawaken" the material.

Then we moved to the floor with two sets of digit cards, and the kids played around with combining the digits to make numbers. They were extremely enthusiastic about it, and spent half an hour coming up with two, three, and four digit numbers, finally pulling out an encyclopedia and recreating dates from history.



My version of the Sun Dance drawing, for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing. I included the 4 animal helpers and the 7 wolves that make up the Big Dipper as well.

It feels GREAT to be back to our regular rhythms again. I've finally broken out of my January Inertia (only because the kids insisted -- I would have been perfectly happy wallowing for another couple of weeks) and feel like a normal human being again. What IS it about January?!?!

Oh, and as a quick addendum to yesterday's post about my kids' inaugural experience, the boys were both thrilled to recognize the melody of the Air/Simple Gifts rendition performed by the quartet before the Oath of Office was administered -- we used "Simple Gifts" in our last adventure circle! Zoo Boy planted himself directly in front of the TV for the actual swearing in, then when it was over, came to snuggle in next to me, saying "This is NICE!" Both boys listened very attentively to President Obama's speech, and when it was over, J said "Malia and Sasha must be so proud of their Dad!" It was a wonderful experience to share with the boys, I feel so fortunate to have them at home with me so that we can celebrate our living history together.