Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Book of Numbers

The Queen is beginning her math lessons this week, and we will be following a very simple Waldorf inspired plan.

Our topics will include:
Book of Numbers - to introduce the numbers 1-12
All About Zero - learning about the concept of zero
The Four Processes - using simple stories that feature her favorite characters from Peter Rabbit, we will learn about addition, subtraction, multiplication and division

The Book of Numbers may seem silly to some, especially if your child has been counting things for years, but often a child can count or identify numerals, without any real understanding of what "one" or "three" really means. A book of numbers allows you to spend a few weeks looking at each number and helping your child grasp these more difficult concepts and gain a deeper understanding of numbers. You may use anything you like to create your book of numbers, loose paper that can be bound together when completed or slid into page protectors, or you could use a Waldorf style main lesson book. We are using these scrapbooks, because I have a large supply of them (they make wonderful nature journals). They are half off at Hobby Lobby this week, so they are cheap ($5 each), the paper is nice and heavy, and they have plenty of pages (36), so we can only use one side of the paper to prevent smearing.

the Queen's Number One page
One: God, me, sun, nose, mouth, earth


Our reading for this day is Designed by God, So I Must be Special, which uses childlike stick drawn illustrations and cute rhymes to talk about all the things God created, focusing on the 5 senses He gave us and how we can experience His creation through them (dovetails nicely with our creation studies :)

A great thank you to both Katherine and Serendipity for many of the ideas from this post!

1 comment:

Christy said...

I've made these with both of my girls. We also made the addition ladders for each number and it helped to introduce the concepts and cement the number bonds. There are pictures of them at Serendipity.

These books are neat.