Tuesday 8 January 2013

January is suppost to be maths months...but it doesn't have to be all about the maths!

Well now according to the beacon mama s curriculum pack that i brought back in the summer January is suppose to be devoted to maths ...um , yes well.

Maths inst my strong point , i don't hate it i just find it a little boring a little daunting and well i dont see the relevance  of Pythagoras  and trigonometry in day to day life .

with that in , mind i  had a bit of a Sunday evening panic flick through some Waldorf inspired maths lessons and decided to just pick out a few here and there that i like the look of and that can be applied to every day life.

we have made a start today and yesterday discussing decimals . we talked about the word dec meaning ten and then we got on with using the English currency system as an introduction in to the maths.

using the 100p in a pound concept i asked the children if they would rather have

7.0                     .70         or       7.00

they all of course opted for the latter saying that they would like 7 pounds instead of seventy pence or even 7 pence.

Gypsie and summer spent a while writing out  1/10 of a pound = 10p or .10
                                                                     2/10 of a pound = 20p or .20

                                                                                                              ...and so on .

Summer found this easy were as Gypsie struggled a little.

Today they made some place value charts and summer wanted to do some addition using decimals.

Iv gotten so much more in to trusting my children , that im not bothered if one of them decides they don't want to do there maths . I trust in them and in there choices and i know that when they want to learn it and when they need to learn it they will do.

Gypsie made her decimal chart , didn't really understand it and then decided to do a puzzle instead where as summer who has a deeper understanding asked me to write out some maths questions for her . Both options are fine and im glad iv learnt to appreciate and respect my children on this journey of ours.I didn't always feel like this , many a time iv sat at a table explaining things to an angry child and us both getting nowhere. I m learning so much from my children.

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