CANAJOHARIE — If you have 20 stuffed animals at home and your parents let you go to the toy store to buy four more, how many total animals would you have?

And, do you have a favorite toy store?

Those were two questions posed in a video first grade students at East Hill Elementary School in Canajoharie watched during a recent math class. Teacher Ann Marie Murphy shows a video before most lessons this year as part of the school’s new math curriculum for kindergarten through fifth grade students.

The program — called “My Math”, published by McGraw-Hill — focuses on using the skills students learn in class in real-life situations.

It’s also aligned with the Common Core State Standards, which provide the framework of what students are expected to learn every year. In elementary school, students are expected to learn the fundamentals of numbers and operations, geometry, data, measurement, and early algebra.

 ”We’re very lucky to have this because it’s directly linked to Common Core and there’s a lot of practical application,” said Elementary School Principal Stacy Ward, adding, “It’s not just learning the math skills; it’s applying them to real-life problems.”

To help make the learning easier to digest and keep students’ interest, the new series uses online games, videos, student-created examples, downloadable applications — or “apps”, and hands-on tools called “manipulatives” (physical objects such as counters, shapes, or 10-unit blocks).