Geoboard Time!

Haven't been updating in almost a week. I cracked my tailbone two Saturdays ago and it got a lot worse before it finally starting feeling better. And by that, I mean being able to sit comfortably for more than 10 minutes at a time!

Enough about fractured tailbones! On to math!

My kids love using their geoboards. The ones we have were part of our Saxon manipulatives package to go along with our Saxon math program. If you don't have a geoboard, they are simple to make (and the homemade ones can be used with more materials than the ones we currently have, too). Just take a square piece of wood and mark spots on it to form rows of dots spaced about an inch-and-a-half to two inches apart. These rows, should line up up-and-down and across the board, to form and fill in a large square. Then you simply nail in some small nails (leave them sticking up enough to wrap rubber bands around them.

The kids can use rubber bands to make shapes on the board and it can be used over and over again.

 

For older kids, you could even put the nails in a circle shape (outline only or smaller circles inside the outer one) and let them create a 3-D "Spirograph" design.

I've even seen where someone has taken an outline of their home state, placed the paper copy on a board for their guide, and put the nails in to outline their state. For a really fancy effect, they put nails in the shape of a heart where their hometown is located within the state map, and again, using the "spirograph" concept, made a beautiful work of art. (By the way, this will sneak in a geography lesson.)

The point of the geoboard is, of course, to teach math concepts, but it can also be a lot of fun! Your children will learn to copy designs, learn to create their own shapes and designs, and enjoy the assignment.