Manic Monday: Unifix Cubes

We've been using Unifix cubes every day.  Kees is homeschooling for Kindergarten, and our goal by the end of the school year is to count to 100.  That's how many Unifix cubes came in our set.

Missing the white cubes, that's why there's only 90 in this picture.  I have to watch out for stuff like that because my sister will TOTALLY notice, and ask me about why there's only 90 instead of 100.

You can buy them on amazon, here.  At the time of posting this, they are $12.82 (free shipping with amazon prime).  What's great about buying from amazon, is not having to track down a teacher store. Not to mention, if I found them in the store, there'd me 7 million other things I would want to buy.  I'm not positive, but I would guess Toys R'Us would have these or something similar, and probably Mardel's, if you don't like shopping online.

What's great about Unifix cubes, are the many, many ways you can use them.  Addition, subtraction, patterns, counting, fractions, counting by multiples, measuring, color recognition, and on and on.  They're also colorful and fun.  Our set came with a booklet with various activities to do with the cubes.

Patterns

Building

While we are learning to count, I add ten more cubes each week. This week, Kees will choose four colors and we'll count to 40.  So far, Kees is loving math, and I know where he gets it from.  I seriously can't wait to count by 2s, 3s, 5s etc and do fractions with our Unifix cubes.

When Kees was counting, I took note of which numbers he struggled with.  Then I replaced those cubes with blue ones. I counted the ones he already knew and had him say the blue ones.  After two times through, he had them down!

One thing I've noticed with Kees, and I'll be watching to see when he figures it out, is keeping track. When he loses track, he usually starts back over from the beginning.  Eventually, he'll figure out that he can start back over at the color breaks for each set of ten.  So if he gets confused around 13 or 14, he could start back over at 11, and go from there.

Even if you're child is older, these would be great for multiplication too, and doing addition/subtraction homework.  Some kids really latch onto concepts when there are visual aids.  I feel like we've already gotten our money's worth, just using them to learn to count, but I know we'll be able to use them for years to come.