School

I can't tell you how impressed I am with Aidan's effort towards school and learning in general.

He works so hard and wants to learn.  For all the countless thought interruptions and brain reboots he has to endure everyday, it just simply blows me away he is doing as well as he is in school.  Of course we ended up having to slow down.  But he will still finish in time to start 1st grade with his peers.

When I saw something similar to these... I'll call them bead sticks... on another blog (it's called counting coconuts if you want to look at some great ideas) I knew it would help Aidan.  It's probably a no brainer to most people, but I had not thought to use them for Math.  I use them to help him estimate (a concept he's struggled with because he's very literal) and for counting in 2s, 5s, and 10s.  The two on the left are the ones I use only for estimating.  On the other blog their beads were all the same color.  I wanted to help Aidan naturally group in 5s, so I deliberately colored them to point out the groups of 5 within a larger number.  We also use a loose pipe cleaner with beads to practice his addition and subtraction.  It is particularly handy with subtraction.  And it helps with fine motor practice too. :)