Gnome Divide loves to share. In fact, "Share" is her nickname. So she supervises whenever we want to split things up and give everyone equal parts. Here is D trying to divide 24 jewels into four parts. He also did three parts and six parts. Five didn't work so well, of course.Waldorf first graders use lots of manipulatives (and then make drawings of what they have done). We don't do too much with written equations until later. However, D did learn and draw the sign for division. It looks just like a stick splitting up a set of two jewels.
Manipulatives are such an intelligent way to teach basic math principles. When I think about it I'm somewhat bothered that anyone tries to do it *without* manipulatives.
ReplyDeleteI remember one day when W was 4 or 5 and we were in the car on the way to the dairy where we got our milk. We had several crates of the empty milk bottles, and he observed that there were three crates and six bottles in each one. I asked him how many bottles there were altogether, and he counted them all individually, then announced "three sixes makes 18" Multiplication is not a difficult concept, if you can SEE it!
I just think Black's Cool Homeschool is so dang awesome!
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