Looking for a hands-on way to teach your child the concept of odd and even?  You’re in the right place!

First, choose your manipulative.  Think about what your child would prefer, older children tend to like the linking cubes and younger ones enjoy the math bears.  You can use either one for this activity.  Anything small around your house would work if you have enough of them- pennies, buttons, crayons, peanuts, etc.  In this lesson, I will use math bears

A number is even if it is divisible by two.  If it is not divisible by two, then it is odd.  The hands-on way to demonstrate this to kids is simple!

1. Beforehand, make a pile of cards with odd and even numbers on them, one number per card.

2. Put the pile face down on a tray or table with your manipulatives.

3. You, the parent, turn over the first card and say the number aloud.  Take out the corresponding numbers of bears or cubes.  For example, if you got the number five, take out five bears.

Take out five bears

4. Show your child that you are going to match your bears with a buddy.  It helps to place the bears in two lines next to each other (see picture).  You are grouping them by twos.  I like using the math bears for this, because you can see how they look like they are holding a buddy’s hand! 

Orange bear does not have a buddy.

Notice that when you have five bears, one bear is left without a buddy.  You can even say, “That’s odd, one bear doesn’t have a buddy”, playing on the dual meaning of “odd”!   You can even call him the “odd man out”.  Whenever a bear is left without a buddy, we call that an odd number.

Teaching Tip: Some times if you have a catch phrase, it helps the child remember.  Anytime a bear is without a buddy you can say, “That’s odd!” The funnier you say it, the better

5. Explain to your child that if all the bears have a buddy, the number is even.  They may notice that the two lines both have the same number of bears in even numbers. Think about if you had to share the bears evenly between you and a friend; to be even, you each need the same number of bears.  If one bear is left without a buddy (as in the case with the number 5), it’s an odd number. For older kids that understand divisibility, explain that you can divide an even number by two, but not an odd one.

6. Let your child continue pairing up the bears to see what numbers are odd and what numbers are even.  Remember your catch phrase! With enough practice they should begin to notice a pattern.  Soon, they can do this in their head without the help of manipulatives.  But, because they had the hands-on practice, they have created a concrete framework to understand the concept!!

One of our favorite picture books to help reinforce this concept is One Odd Day by Doris Fisher!

To see more ways to use the math bears, check out: Math Manipulatives Must Haves

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I’m so thrilled to have our science mom, Staci, write another guest post for us!  Staci is a mom and Cancer Biologist. With her expertise in science and experience as a mom, she shares with us how she incorporates science activities into her children’s everyday experiences. 

Today, she shares how her son’s interest in oceanography led to some fun and educational science activities to do at home!  This week it’s all about waves

Oceanography Exploration– Week One

From our science mom:

I whole-heartedly believe in child-led learning and think my kids appreciate and understand better when we are discussing topics that they are interested in.  My son has been on an oceanography kick lately, so we decided to do a couple at home science experiments to learn more.  When I started thinking about what types of things we could explore, I realized we could have several weekends worth of material for our Science Saturday adventures.  For the first weekend, I decided we would deal with ocean water properties; specifically, wave dynamics.

We started our wave exploration by making our own wave bottle.

You can easily make a wave bottle at home, too.  We made ours in a smaller, individual sized water bottle so it would be easier for small hands to manipulate.  To make your own, fill any sized bottle 1/3 with water and add a few drops of food coloring.  My daughter really wanted to make a purple one, but we stuck with the usual blue.  Fill the rest of bottle most of the way with cooking oil.  I superglued the bottle cap back on, because you can’t be too careful!  Both of my children really enjoyed tipping the bottle and watching the waves.  My daughter also really liked shaking it up and watching the layers separate, but that’s a lesson for a different day!

After my son played awhile with the bottle we began discussing simple wave dynamics.

Using this figure, we defined these terms of simple wave dynamics:

 Crest:  The highest point of the wave.

Trough:  The lowest point of the wave.

Wave Height: The distance between the crest and trough of the wave.

Wavelength: The distance between successive crests or troughs.

Amplitude: One half the wave height; or the distance of either the crest or trough to the water line.

Seeing this diagram and discussing the definitions reminded my son of an episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy we watched recently that also discussed waves.  He asked if ocean waves are the same as sound waves.  I love when science concepts are applied across topics!  We only briefly discussed the frequency, vibration and volume of sound waves, but I promised we would delve further into sound waves in future experiments.

We all had a lot of fun playing with the wave bottle and learned a lot about wave dynamics.  I hope your family enjoys this activity as much as we did.

Mixing colors is one of my preschooler’s favorite things to do.  It’s messy, he gets to play with water, and it’s fun to see what colors he can make!  However, it’s not just for preschoolers.  Older kids love color mixing too, probably for the same reasons!  They can explore the concept a little deeper by experimenting with shades of color.

We have done color mixing before and listened to the story Mouse Paint by Ellen Stohl Walsh at our library story time.  My son loves this book.  In the story you see the white mice hop into different color paints and they begin mixing colors, thus creating new ones. It is a great visual for color mixing.  Better yet, our librarian turned this into a felt story.  My son still thinks our librarian is magic because because she put a white felt mouse into a small box and he came out red!  If you have the time, making this into a felt story would be fantastic.  This book illustrates how the three primary colors create three secondary colors.

Kids tend to learn the three basics first:

• Red and yellow make orange
• Blue and yellow make green
• Red and blue make purple

Extending the basics of color mixing, Color Dance by Ann Jonas takes the concept a little deeper.  You start with the three dancers holding long scarves- red, yellow, and blue.  At first they dance together making orange, green, and purple.  After that, you see how they can make various shades of each color- such as marigold, vermilion, aquamarine.  A boy comes by holding a white scarf and we see the colors become paler.  He brings a gray scarf and the color become dark.  And lastly, he dances by with a black scarf and the colors are barely visible.  This is what inspired our latest color adventure.

First, I made a big circle with six pieces to make a color wheel.  I colored every other spot with a primary color- red, blue, and yellow.  We opened up to the first page of the book, Color Dance and matched the color of the dancers with the colors on our wheel. We looked at the page where the red dancer and the yellow dancer made the color orange.  My little one saw the orange and noted that red and yellow were the two colors that made orange.  He started looking for an orange crayon to add it to our color wheel.

I showed him how we color the orange between the two color that made it- red and yellow.  He attempted to do this himself, then asked me to color it in.

We continued using the book to figure out what colors go in our remaining spots.  We saw the yellow and blue dancers made green and the blue and red dancers made purple.  We added them to our color wheel.

Following along in the book, we learned that white makes colors appear pale.  So he grabbed a white crayon and rubbed it over the blue to see what would happen.   Next, he tried coloring over the blue with the black crayon since we learned from the story that black seems to block the color.  The difference was not that noticeable using crayons!

I hung the color wheel up on the wall and we began some hands on fun of color mixing.  We started out very orderly.  I added food coloring to three glass measuring bowls of water- red, blue, and yellow.  First, he tested the primary colors just as it was in the book.  He poured some yellow and blue together, yellow and red together, and some blue and red together.  As he did each one we predicted what color would be made by referring to the color wheel we had just completed.  He successfully made all three secondary colors.

After making purple, he mixed the blue and yellow to make green.

Checking out the green!

After that, he had a color mixing and pouring free for all!  He kept mixing all kinds of colors together, eventually ending with all the colors mixed together. It resulted in a very dark forest green.

Mixing red and orange

All the colors mixed together

For older kids, they can experiment with the shade of the colors.  What happens if you pour more red than yellow?  What of if you have more yellow than red?  The different amounts of each color affect the shade it creates.  They can compare this with the shades shown in the book Color Dance.

Color mixing is so much fun.  Your little one can explore science and art together!  Happy mixing

                             Mouse Paint Color Dance