Maths

Maths was one of my favourite subjects at school but I know that I am likely to be in the minority.  Sadly there are too many who not only hate maths but were actively put off the subject by poor teaching, we don't all learn the same way and this is a subject that can be hard to learn if you are not taught in a way that you understand.  A few months ago I posted about a day in our learning life, maths didn't really feature at all in that day.   Some of my fellow home educators teach maths along with English both important subjects and skills to have.  At the moment I don't teach anything and I have yet to be convinced that I need to teach any Maths but time will tell.....

My children have both learned to count in their own time and in their own way.  In many ways counting and understanding numbers is one of the hardest concepts to understand for a young child,  especially as when you get beyond ten the numbers don't follow a pattern, eleven, twelve....  It is not surprising really that many children leave primary school unable to count or understand numbers.  It is one thing to be able to count to ten or further but it is another skill to be able to use and manipulate those numbers.  It is important to me that I do not mention adding up, taking away or multiplication until I am absolutely sure my children have fully understood numbers.  In my opinion this skill needs to be there first, it would be a bit like trying to build a house without digging the foundations properly.  What do I consider to be fully understanding numbers?  Well I think they need to be able to count in the correct order, both forwards (1 - 10) and backwards (10 - 1), if you ask them a number they know what comes next without having to count out up to that number. Playing board games with them is an excellent way of helping this skill.  The dice will also help with pattern recognition which is another maths skill.

My eldest prefers to learn on his own, he resists most activities I suggest.  This does not particularly concern me but has meant that if I want to ensure that he is learning maths skills all the time that I find resources that enable him to find out about maths.  I have bought a few maths stories from this series but I was very disappointed in them.  The concepts were at his level but the story was so simple and basic, they are a simple picture book style with a few sentences on each page, that he just wasn't interested in them.   I have yet to find any stories that are entertaining for him to read and at his level of maths understanding but I will keep looking..........if you have any recommendations would love to hear them!  I discovered a series of books which have fitted the bill but are sadly not stories,  Murderous Maths are like the Horrible History books if you know about them but are about maths not history.  We have found a few of the books in secondhand book shops and now have quite a collection.  I have realised in the last week that he now understands the concepts of fractions and percentages learnt about through these books.  I also bought one of the books by Rob Castaway who has written many books on Maths.  I have found him reading this on many occasions so we may be adding more of his books to our collection.  He also asks questions, which we do our best to answer by helping him to understand how we got to our answer, rather than just giving him the answer.

I have yet to work out how my youngest will want to progress with maths.  She is still at the learning numbers stage.  We are playing lots of board games and a set of number games that I acquired called NumberStart by Living and Learning.  We are also make good use of the book mentioned in this post, Learn to Count.

We have a box of cuisenaire rods which I bought as I used them as a child and loved them.  They have not been used much for actual maths but the children do love making pictures with them, I am sure that this is a useful use for them but I have yet to work out what they are actually learning by doing this.  There are many resources that you can use alongside these rods but my eldest has not been interested in any of these, maybe my youngest will when she is older.

That is what maths looks like in our house at the moment!

Eleventy

My youngest has been showing an interest in numbers over the last six months, before that she was only vaguely aware of them.  Over the last six months we have concentrated first on the numbers one to five followed by five to ten.  We have read lots of books that involve counting particularly the beautiful illustrated The Pear Tree by Meredith Hooper.  We have played lots of board games moving the counter together to start off with, this also helped with reading numbers on the dice which she can now do without counting the dots.  We have used a book with magnetic tiles Learn to Count which has helped with recognising the written form of numbers.  We have also played the number games in a lovely set from Living and Learning called NumberStart which does not appear to be available to buy any more this has consolidated learning in all forms of numbers and patterns.

She is now ready to move on to numbers beyond ten.  The numbers that are really hard to learn in English and most languages around the world, there are a few exceptions, as they are completely illogical.  Eleven?  Twelve?  It would seem from my limited research that they are a hangover from the days of old when much was counted in quantities up to a dozen or twelve a number which is divisible by more numbers than ten.  So there were particular names for the first twelve numbers in counting before you start with adding ten, thirteen etc., like so many words in our language it has never been changed for the sake of logic.  Once you have learnt the written forms up to ten it is then very easy to recognise the numbers beyond 11, 12, 13 etc.,  my youngest has no problem with putting these numbers in order but the words are flumoxing her.  At the moment we are on eleventy and twelvety which are marvellous adaptations in my book and we are sticking to for the moment.

When we count eleven elephants, which we have in one book, we have eleventy ephelents oh the joys of language and young children!