Legoboy figured out that if you're ok with "girly" pink LEGOs, you could easily make this material entirely yourself!
The day I presented the introduction to him, I needed a crown for the unit bead. He was more than happy to oblige! This crown came from the Kingdoms Lego sets.
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| The Unit is the KING of the decimal system. Everything centers around him. I bet he's a toddler ;) hehehe |
Materials for this work:
- Decimal Fraction board - printable onto a couple sheets of cardstock and attached - or both mounted onto posterboard. Montessori Homeschooling has it for free, or it is available other places for free or purchase. (I recommend this set of 2 files from this site; ask me about the other files) - EASY
- decimal colored beads - pull them from the long division work (racks and tubes; test tubes) - just a few as these are not used often - EASY
- 1 cm cubes in blue, red, green, light blue, light pink, and light green - this is where the Legos come in! Use the 1x1 bricks! EASY if Legos; medium difficulty if needing to paint/stain them. Just buy a bunch to toss into a plastic bag with some paint or stain - shake around - scoop out with a tiny wire colander or even just a fork - lay out on wax paper to dry. ;)
- white number cards for the decimal numbers, that when placed on the board the 0 fits in the units place; the decimal point is on the line; the next digit is in the tenths column and so on, with each digit in its appropriate column. The font colored according to its category. MEDIUM difficulty - if you buy the board and the numbers together you're set; otherwise, perhaps someone could develop an easy download for the board AND the numbers so they coordinate!
- You will also need the gray number cards from the Bank Game (elementary Bank Game - the one with only cards) - EASY
- For one part of the introduction you'll want the white decimal cards from the Bank Game as well - EASY
- and finally several black hole punches to use as decimal points - EASY
- There is one candelabra that could be made on the spot - a wonderful art extension for the children to then re-create on their own, because yours won't be all pretty and fancy! (wink-wink, hint-hint - do not make it pretty and fancy) - EASY-MEDIUM
- For later work, you will want some skittles - pull from the stamp game or the long division work - or draw a skittle on a piece of paper! EASY!
So you see - once you get to this work, the only new material is the board itself, a few black hole punches, its own number cards, and the cubes. None of these are tricky to make!
