Number Our Days (This is Math?)

When our children are young babies we give their age in DAYS. Eventually we speak of how many MONTHS old - and then we start to round to the nearest YEAR or half a year.

When telling how old a child is, the real problem is - IT CHANGES EVERY DAY!!

Seems like a good opportunity to incorporate MATH.

This week's "This is Math?" helps you focus on some facts that your children just ought to know.  Most kids know their own birthdate.  Teach them to love their siblings by knowing those birth dates, also.  (Teach them the birthdays of Mom and Dad when they are young and they will be able to remember your birthday when they go away to college or have families of their own!)

I believe you should be able to copy this Tic-Tac-Toe board and paste it to a word processing document. Each student should pick THREE (or even more!) squares and then complete each task in each of those squares.  They might want to try make a tic-tac-toe.

How many days in a week?  What are their names?  Can you say them BACKWARDS?	How many month in the year?  What are their names?  Each month is given a number in the order they occur in the year.  Learn these.	How many days in a year?
How many days in each month?  (Learn the little poem)	How many weeks in a year?  How many weeks before June?  How many weeks before Thanksgiving?  Christmas?	How many years old are you?  How many weeks old are you?  What about your siblings?
What is your birthdate?  How many days until your birthday? Learn to tell your birthday using numbers.	Learn the birthdates of your family members. Learn, also, that DOB means "Date of Birth".	How many days old are you?  Your siblings?

You could expand your exploration into other languages - learning the days of the weeks and the names of the months in another language.  You could also learn to count up to 31 in another language.

With the months of the year you can play a game - even driving down the road.  You name a month, the kids have to figure out what NUMBER is associated with that month.  Or, you give a number between 1 and 12 and they name the month.  Make it a contest if it would be fair, or take turns, asking easier questions of the younger children.

You remember the poem about the number of days in each month?   You can google this - and you might also find a little devise using your knuckles to help know how many days in a given month.

Number your days, but count your blessings!
CathyH

Psalm 90:12 says "Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."