The Warlord Series

We recently discovered some great picture books that give a fun little math lesson.  The Warlord Series contains several stories about a boy who "accidentally" solves many different math riddles.  The stories are entertaining and contain a short activity at the end of the book. 

In The Warlord's Beads the boy discovers a way of counting and keeping track of numbers.  He introduces the reader to the abacus.  Braedi and Ephram made an abacus following this tutorial.  Then Braedi and I learned how to count, add and subtract with the abacus.  It is an interesting tool.

In The Warlord's Alarm the boy and his friend discover how to make an alarm clock to wake up in time to get the Warlord to the palace in time. 

 And the same 2 characters build a land ship in The Warlord's Messengers.  This ship has a sail and wheels and travels 10 times as fast as a horse.  The boy and his friend need to reach the Warlord quickly to give him a message. 

 The Warlord's Puzzle is the legend of how tangrams came about.  An artist created a beautiful tile to present to the Warlord, then drops it and it breaks into 7 pieces.  The village is challenged to put it back together.  The boy is the only one who could do it and is rewarded with a new home for himself and his family.  We played with our tangrams and then read another story (not from this series) about a grandfather who tells a story to his grand-daughter using tangrams.  Braedi, Dyllan and I tried to build the pictures with our tangrams. 

We love learning from books!

How Many Coins?

We did a few money activities for math today. One went like this: I gave an amount and the kids had to find the coins that equaled it. Braedi tried really hard to be different and found creative ways to get the amount. Lindy and Corbin went with what they knew. I liked seeing the different ways they came up with.