M is for Maths

So our letter learning journey has taken us up to the letter M.

I think this letter really covers my son’s favourite things which are Maths and Music.

He is always keen to talk about maths – even going in and out of the house he talks about who came first, second, third and so on.

He’s always counting and adding.

We started with a book but it was mainly stickers which were quiet difficult for him to get off with his bad arm.

So I turned to good old sweets. I put different amounts and got him to count them and write the number underneath. I asked him what the signs + and = meant too – and then we added the two numbers together and counted out the right number of sweets for the answer.

Then I moved onto multiplication. He is only 3 so I wasn’t about to teach him his times tables – but the concept of so many in a group and how many groups. Also that this is the same both ways.

To make this clearer:

I made 8 groups and each group had 2 in it. I taught him that this was 8 twos – or 8 multiply by 2. And then he counted up how many sweets that equalled.

Then by turning his chair to another part of the table and a bit of shuffling I showed him that it could also be 2 groups which have 8 in them – and then he counted them.

Thus showing that 8×2 is the same as 2×8.

I think he understood this concept very well. Besides he liked eating some afterwards.

M is also for mud – which my youngest just loves to play with.

So following on the mathematical theme they made patterns in the mud.

He really enjoyed using the laptop last week so asked if we could use it again. So I showed him YouTube and we listened to Music and had a good old boogie.

We talked about other M words and I meant to do Mario with him but ran out of time – so we have to settle with mushrooms.

And of course our craft for the cupboard to remind us – this is a Mummy Monkey.