Subjects

Maths Stories 3

We got the cuisinaire rods about 2 weeks ago and Abigail (just 3) was really interested (Adrian, just 1, was too but they very soon ended up in his mouth…)

She looked at them, noticed the numbers underneath when she took them out, and basically played the whole time at taking them all out of the box… We helped put them back but maybe should have left her to it. I
must admit that I haven’t taken them out in the past week, couldn’t face tidying up all these rods! I should maybe give her more time and let her play with it. But I have noticed that she often needs us to do something with/for her at the beginning and then gradually, she will get more confident and try for herself, usually very successfully.

She has taken a real liking for jigsaw puzzles (maybe because we got some more difficult ones recently) and we had to do them with her first. Little by little, each time she asked for less and less help and in
about 5 gos she could do them by herself (24 pieces). If she is on her own she will do them very quickly, if we are around she will ask for help…

As for numbers, well she is really interested in them. I printed out some number lines and she loved showing that she could recognise the numbers on them. In the morning she also reads the time (the numbers,
separately) on our digital alarm clock. She spots some numbers here and there. I don’t do any formal work with her really, which in a way I feel bad about but there again, we tend to be autonomous so I want to let her find her own way.

As you can see, I still need to find my way round our “philosophy” and what to initiate. I don’t want to be teaching as it wouldn’t work, but I don’t know if we are doing enough. We’ll see.

An archive post from 2002 contributed by Laure.

Maths Stories 2

Abbie had an early interest in numbers that continued to grow as she learned more about how they worked. We started with number recognition games that concentrated on one-to-one correspondence. At first I would lay out cards that each had a numeral on them. We started with 1, 2, 3 and I showed her that we could put one bear (we used plastic counting bears but you could use anything from dried beans to M&M’s) on the 1, two on the 2, etc. We moved quickly through the numbers and in no time I could pick five random numbers, lay down the cards, and she would count out the correct number of bears for each card. Her awareness of adding began early when she told me that she had two biscuits and if I gave her one more biscuit then she would have three. Subtraction went hand in hand with addition and I decided to look into math curriculums.

At 3 ½ years old Abbie was very interested in writing things down. I think she felt important and grown up with a pencil in hand. She was very excited when her new math book arrived and was eager to complete a few (sometimes much more than a few) pages each day. We continued on with many of the games from Peggy Kaye’s ‘Games for Math’ and did a lot of work with manipulatives. We worked with pattern blocks, counting bears, linking cubes, beads, and anything we could find around the house. One of her favourite math games was the story game from Peggy Kay’s book. Whenever we walked anywhere I would tell her a story that could go something like this, ‘two bears were out in the woods and they got very hungry. The first bear suggested that they split up and each hunt for good things to eat. They decided to meet back at the cave when they were finished. The second bear went along the river. He scooped up a pink salmon as it swam past. Then another salmon swam past and he scooped it up too. How many salmon did he have? (child answers) The second bear went straight for the berry bushes. He collected 6 berries in one hand and two in the other. How many berries did he have altogether? Both bears were very happy with what they had found and went back to the cave. How many salmon did the first bear have? How many berries did the second bear have? How many things to eat did they have altogether?, etc, etc.’ We did this for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

At 4 ½ Abbie was ready to start the Grade 1 book. I ordered it but within a week I knew we would need something different. It was much the same as the kindergarten book, only more boring. It was simply page after page of math problems. I knew I didn’t want Abbie learning math by rote memorization, I wanted her learning in a more involved way. After careful research into many different math programs I decided on Singapore Math. The lessons are based on conceptual understanding instead of rote memorization. There is little repetition and it moves along at a quick pace. It has turned out to be the perfect curriculum for Abbie. She will be starting Singapore 3A in August.

I love the fact that her interest in math has continued to be so strong. It seems as though each time she encounters a new concept in her curriculum she finds ways to reinforce the learning through day to day living. She mentally calculates my purchases when I go to pick up a few things at the store and then she lets me know whether my change was correct or not. Her aunt was in a fashion show a couple of weeks ago and Abbie figured out that if there were ten girls in the show and each girl had to wear two outfits and each walk down the runway would take approximately 3 minutes then the fashion show would be one hour long. She looked up at my Risk board that had a picture of each of the three pieces around the number 360 and then told me that there were 120 of each piece. It’s those types of observations that make home-educating so exciting for me. I know she’s learning new things because I see her progress through her math books, but I know she’s loving the process when I hear how she is applying her knowledge to the world around her.

This is an archive post from 2002 contributed by Sarah and Abbie.

Maths Stories 1

Pre-school we started working with number informally with Dd from just about the time she could talk. We got a tape of times tables when she was 3 and she learnt them as songs. However being fascinated by patterns she has since then started to spot the patterns in the tables and now (at 5+) she has an understanding of what they can be used for and she can use over half the tables up to 10 with increasing confidence. We did simple adding with her from age 2+. She quickly grasped adding any two numbers up to 10 using fingers. Then it has been a natural progression to adding bigger numbers. Now she can do doubles and near doubles and add a single digit number onto a two digit number.

We bought Cuisenaire rods when Dd was 2. We also bought a set of rods (larger scale) which go 10 1-9 2-8 etc and fit into a wooden square. Dd used to love making patterns of all sorts with these at age two. She quickly saw how all the pairs made 10. With Cuisenaire rods she made all sorts of patterns from 2+ We have always used them as a toy, letting her initiate the games, though sometimes playing alongside and setting a pattern to see if she would notice and join in.

For telling the time we did invest in an ELC clock that counts out the minutes around its edge as well as the hours. However Dd showed no interest in learning to read a clock face! She would recognise the numbers on a digital clock, often grouping them incorrectly (e.g. 7:30 would be 73 0!. (Sadly) what has motivated her to learn to tell the time has been on-screen programme guide with digital TV which we got last November. She has learnt how to look up her favourite programmes and see what time they come on and then goes to the clock to see how long before they start! It just goes to show that when the motivation comes from within they find a way!

Shape work began with the shape sorter she had at 1 year. We have always used the correct names for shapes so she picked up the language early on. My Dh often sits down with her now and does a ‘lesson’ about shapes and he will go through regular polygons, their names, number of sides, drawing them, where are the right angles. Dd seems to love this and is quite happy for him to initiate the learning.

This is how we introduced odd and even numbers… House numbers! We moved from a village to a city when Dd was 2 1/2. Fairly soon she could count both up and down in odd or even numbers because we did it while walking around the streets. There are no end of opportunities to use maths when you’re
out and about.

This is an archive post from 2002, contributed by Susan, from the MuddlePuddle list. Thank you Susan!!!!

Maths Links – Updated 2015

This page was originally inspired by the enthusiasm on the MuddlePuddle Yahoo Group for Miquon and Singapore maths, particularly using Cuisinaire Rods. The first few links will hopefully help you find what we did, in terms of equipment and information. Lower down are new online resources added in the 2015 update. I’m happy to receive suggestions.

Learning Maths Experiences One and Two and Three – archive stories from home educators belonging to the Early Years Yahoo Group in 2002/3

Curricula and Materials.

Galore Park – our preference for maths workbooks. Comprehensive practice in public school format.

CIMT Plymouth – Purchasable and online interactive practice books and pages.

Sonlight – A great site where you can buy Miquon, Singapore and Saxon maths curricula, but it has far more on offer too – apart form other books and teaching methods, it has great descriptions and sample sheets of work books. Also has a message board for getting help from other parents.

SingaporeMath Home of this curriculum.

Cuisenaire– Most famous for their maths rods, (similar in style to some Montessori products), there is lots to look at and absorb here.

Online Interactive Maths Websites (UK)

The following sites are live and available in 2015. The are a mixture of resource, free and paid tutoring sites. Descriptions and information as and when I have time!

US Sites

Learn to Read 1

Teaching Reading Using the Phono-GraphixTM in the book ‘Reading Reflex’

Reading Reflex by Carmen McGuiness and Geoffrey McGuiness
ISBN 0-14-028038-3

We came across this book when our d was 18 months old as a result of a feature on Radio 4. We read the book which is a complete teaching reading manual and then made use of parts of it when teaching our d to read. We did not adhere slavishly to the book and it has to be said that our d did quite a bit of the work of teaching herself to read. Once we had got going she seemed to take off of her own accord reading everything in site from cereal packets to printing on her bike frame!

Before we found the above book we had already invested in a tub of magnetic letters from the early learning centre. We taught our d the phonetic alphabet starting off with ‘d’ for daddy, ‘m’ for mummy, ‘H’ for Hannah etc so she had a grasp of initial letter sounds before we started.

Phonographix starts off with games which encourage children to think about how a word is a group of sounds blended together. So, you pick a 3sound word and say the sounds in segmented fashion e.g. d o g The child guesses the word. If they make a mistake sound it out again emphasising the bit they got wrong. Stick to words which use the common sound of each single letter. So words like cat, hat, peg, hot, hit, etc. When the child can segment words you can take it in turns to be the segmenter and blender of words.

Now play a game where you say “I’m thinking of something you wear beginning with ‘h'”. Encourage child to guess an item of clothing (hat). This is a sort of eye spy. You can play it with animals, food anything that appeals.

Building 3 sound words. The book has lots of examples of such words with in a form where you cut out a picture of the word (cat, say) and then have the 3 letters. You encourage the child to choose the picture for the first sound in ‘Cat’ (the picture being ‘C’) You go on with the second sound and third to build up the word. The book goes on to blend the sounds and then write them on a piece of paper while saying them. Since our d’s linguistic skills were far in advance of her fine motor skills we didn’t do any of the mapping at this stage. We used our magnetic letters to build all sorts of 3 sound words.
A game which our d really enjoyed from the book involved starting with a 3 sound word and then exchanging letters (they call them sound pictures) to make new words. You put out a selection of letters and then make the first word. Say you start with ‘dog’. you ask the child to choose from the selection of letters and change dog into cog. Then cog into cot. Then cot into cat and so you go on and on. our d used to love doing these.

The book goes on to give some simple stories that children can now read. No sight words needed. I thought they were very contrived but Dd loved them!

The book goes on with building in adjacent consonants and then on to what it calls the ‘advanced code’. We used various bits from the book at this stage.

However we stopped following the lessons prescriptively as Dd just took off reading. We had, of course, always been reading books to her from about 4 months on (OK she ate them at 4 months) and she loved all sorts including some Dr Seuss books. These proved good early reading material with lots of repetition, rhyme and a zany sense of the ridiculous which appealed to Dd!

The ‘reading reflex’ is not a cheap book (ours cost £23 in 1998). The method appealed to us and worked well with our d.

If anyone wanted more information about either the book or how we used it then email on susanwhitaker@blueyonder.co.uk

(Written by a MuddlePuddle Member)