Math Game: Math Stories
Goal: to accurately tell a story using the language of math.
Materials: paper and pencil, perhaps manipulatives
How To Play: tell a short story, perhaps as short as a sentence or two, and have your child write down the story using math. For example, “I had three apples, but Penny was hungry so I gave her one. How many apples do I have left?” The child should write the equation, or math sentence, or “story,” as 3-1=2.
I love this game. It can help a child make that jump from mere rote pushing around of manipulatives to an understanding of how math is used daily. The child is introduced to many different ways of saying ‘added to” and “subtracted from” by the varying language used in the stories. In working with Penny and doing these math stories for perhaps three or so days now, I have already learned that for her it’s best to adjust the difficulty of the story by adjusting the language I use, all the while keeping in mind her level of interest, and her most recent experiences. Quite naturally she feels more confident in her ability to solve a problem if she has had recent success, so I keep that in mind when telling more involved stories, or making the language a bit trickier. Here are some examples:
1) We had a full Saturday. We went to three different places. We were ready to go home, but Penny wanted to go to two more places, so we did. How many places did we go altogether? Can you write that story down in math?
2) Penny had seven chips. Daddy was VERY hungry and so he took all but two of them. How many chips did Daddy take? Can you write that math sentence down? (Please note that we are not yet at this level!).
3) Penny has four stickers on her arm. Everytime she goes to Mimi’s house, she ends up with two more stickers. If Penny goes to Mimi’s house today, how many stickers will she have? Can you…
4) Daddy has one book. Penny wanted to read a book, so Daddy gave his book to Penny. How many books does Daddy have now? Can you…
My goal is to help Penny learn the different language used everyday in expressing mathematical ideas, and to help her become comfortable with seeing math as a language, one that can tell a story and eventually describe the world. A more mundane, but still practical, goal is to help prepare her for that bane of most math students: word problems. I figure that if she starts early and internalizes just what an equation is “saying,” then it’ll be that much easier for her to both read and write “in math.” I also believe that this type of activity will help her to see that math is not merely pushing around cubes to find out what some number added to some number is. Tying numbers and math to everyday activities will hopefully serve as a motivation to want to learn more advanced math so that she can model more advanced activities.
