A Little Math Practice

Banana Boy has begun adding in columns without carrying.  His math book only had one page of problems, so I made up extra pages in the same style, only using family members and other objects.  For now I kept all the problems the same, which really doesn't build his word problem solving skills, but he still needed to focus on physically setting the problem up and writing it correctly, so I was fine with that.

So one of today's problems was:

Banana Boy ate 178 M & Ms.  Dad ate 21 more than he.  How many M & Ms did Dad eat?

The next problem was:

After eating 178 M & Ms, Banana Boy was really sick but he had 611 M & Ms left.  How many did he have at first?

After he had solved all the problems, I brought out the 2 lb. bag of M & Ms from the cupboard (because the reality is Dad DOES love M & Ms) and poured a big pile out onto the table.  We decided to see what 178 M & Ms really looks like.

In the process, Banana Boy got all sorts of practice counting to 20 by twos and practice counting by 20s and practice narrowing down his groups as he got closer to 178.  He made 5 piles of 20.  Then more piles of 20 until he had 60 more.  Then he knew he needed a pile of 10.  And finally, 8 more.

 2, 4, 6, 8, 10...

This is what 178 M & Ms looks like!

This is what I look like after I've eaten 178 M & Ms.

And no, the pile he actually got to eat was not the pile of 178!