Mulitplication In Nature

We love Math U See. It's a math curriculum for homeschoolers. As Z says... "It's math, you see mommie!".It comes with the standard math manipulatives but with a "twist", visuals, etc. But, it just put's things together both visually and mentally in a way that helps children (and mommies) not rely on their fingers so much. After all, ten fingers and ten toes can only take you so far. Right?

We reviewed addition, subtraction, graphs, place value and a few other things until our curriculum arrived at the end of September. Then, we began getting familiar with the Math U See way of learning. We began learning our multiplication facts or "fast adding" about two weeks ago. We've also been listening to all the songs... if you could only hear the teacher explain one-"tee" one. It's really quite comical but very sensible.

Today, we started skip counting by 2's, 5's and 10's. This helps the kids learn their multiplication facts. So we began "building" our counting with the colored blocks provided with the curriculum. As we built, Lilly first noticed that it looked like a staircase. I showed her how each step grew by two steps. Thus, counting by 2's. She agreed except for the "blue steps" looked bigger to her. I took the orange 2 block (every number 1-10 is represented by the same color... two is always 2 orange blocks stuck together) and started showing her that even the blue steps were two steps up. We began discussing why the blue steps (at 10, 20 & 30) visually looked bigger. I explained that it was a optical illusion. She was seeing more of the blue color thus her mind told her the blue steps were bigger. This makes me wonder if she is a visual learner.

Next we noticed the pattern that emerged. Orange, yellow, purple, brown and blue or 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. To explain a little further... once you get to the blue 10 bar you add a 2, then 4, then 6, and then 8 to make the corresponding numbers. Again, the number 2 is always represented by an orange bar, the number 4 is always a yellow bar, and so on. So a blue 10 bar plus an orange 2 bar represents the number 12... and so on. Then, I asked her if she thought all of our stairs in our house were the same height. "Nope!" she said and repeated the blue stairs represented in the staircase she built was bigger. So, again I showed her with another orange 2 bar that they ALL increased by 2. This seemed to sink in and we began to discuss other patterns represented by numbers in the world.

It was time for our nature walk so encouraged her to look for patterns in nature today. She was so excited she began by examining the pot plants in our house before I could get my shoes on. Wow... excitement about math, patterns and multiplication!

We went on our nature walk behind our house. We found so many representations of numbers, patterns and multiplication facts we were amazed. Here are a few examples of the "Math We Saw":

From left to right, top to bottom...

• Picture 1: Three points on the leaves counted four times. (3x4=12)
• Picture 2: There are actually 5 points on these leaves. Five counted three times. (5x3=15)
• Picture 3: Six petals counted two times. (6x2=12)
• Picture 4: Six petals counted 3 times. (6x3=18)

We started by simple skip counting and ended finding patterns in nature which led to multiplication problems. Wow! I have so many new word problems to use. God is good.