Happy holidays to all! Here's our present to you: A brand-new Brick Math Lesson of the Month!

For December, we have a lesson from Addition Using LEGO® Bricks. The lesson helps students learn two important concepts:
1.  How to model place values with bricks
2.  How to model addition using those place value models

This is a great way to teach students about place values. The lesson models the ones with 1x1 bricks, the tens with 1x2 bricks, and the hundreds with 1x3 bricks. Once students understand how to model numbers using place values, it’s a short step to learning how to add using place values.

The lesson of the month gives the step-by-step lesson from the Teacher’s Edition first, and then shows the corresponding pages in the Student Edition that students will complete as they learn.

To receive this Lesson of the Month and be registered to get a new one every month, click here.

LEGO® bricks are a very versatile manipulative for math. In fact, Brick Math author Dr. Shirley Disseler has developed a method of teaching students to tell time using bricks!
 
The technique is called a “linear clock,” which models the numbers 1 through 12 with bricks. It works well to teach students how to tell time and how to find elapsed time. Baseplates are joined together to make the clock, and each stud on the baseplate models a five-minute increment.
 
Naturally, when using bricks to teach the concept of time, it’s important to also relate the linear clock to both an analog clock and a digital clock, so students learn how to tell time through conventional means.
 
Here’s an example of using bricks on the linear clock to show elapsed time (from Basic Measurement Using LEGO® Bricks):
 
Using the linear clock model, place a red 1x1 brick at 2:00 pm on the baseplate. Count forward 65 minutes, and mark the new time on the baseplate with another red 1x1 brick. What time is it now? Write a math sentence for your model.
Answer: The new time is 3:05 pm.
Math sentence: 2 hours + 65 minutes = 3 hours 5 minutes or 3:05 pm