Juggling a sick E and an unsettled S, plus making and serving dinner for W and T, D and I still managed to start back at maths fun with T.
I started with some "bedtime math" activities that I had received on my email and had been saving. T really likes the 'story' that accompanies the problem solving. It is American - only downside and a lot of the problems are in feet & inches, pounds & ounces and/or the stories are about American football, or the Thanksgiving Turkey. I have to do a bit of adaptation to make it meaningful to T.
The first question we did was comparing the length of the longest surfboard and the longest snowboard ever made. They were 39 feet and 32 feet respectively. The problem obviously was to work out the difference between the two. The secondary problem was about a surfboard that was 36 feet long.
T guessed his answer - I think he got it wrong once and then got it right. I tried to ascertain from him the strategy he used to answer the problem. I was imagining he would say he used his fingers to count up or count down. However this is where he often goes wrong as he counts the first number erroneously. As for the difference between 36 and 39 - I had to help him with this one. To count up from 36 without counting 36.
Grrr it got me cranky at how they teach maths at school and how easily it must be to forget it. And T got an A for maths?
Anyway I immediately closed up the bedtime maths and decided we had to go back to pebble maths basics.
So tonight we did building the numbers in the correct 'houses' - odd and even. So we build three as two and a one. We build four as two twos. We did this with pistachio shells (a step up from lentils!).
Then we did some simple addition and subtraction by using the housed numbers. So two plus two (is two sets of two) so is four. Three plus two is two plus one plus two. (Bit hard to explain this without the pebbles!)
Then we progressed to the zig zag chart. Where the odd numbers are down one side and the even down the other with lines between each number.
When we add an even number we go down the houses or sides. When we add an odd number we go down the same side and then ACROSS the house. So for example two plus four is actually two plus two plus two so we move down the even house twice to get to six. Also for example two plus five is down the even house twice and then across once to make seven.
This is much easier to explain visually which is why it is a great way to learn this rote maths. It is a visual cue system.
We stuck to just learning how to move up and down the houses for even numbers tonight as we were having to go back to such basics. We will try the odds later in the week.
I am such a fan of this method of maths. It is visual and I hope will make it easier and more spontaneous for T to do mental arithmetic. We'll see!Labels: Maths
