When I first began to educate my children at home, I read a great piece of advice – “a home ed mum and her money are soon parted”. The advice was clear; don’t buy loads of books, courses and resources straight away. I ignored it.
I scoured the internet, snapping up resources, courses, books and worksheets. My children ignored most of them. I had all the gear and no idea, despite being a private tutor!
Gradually, I learned the hard way that I had wasted thousands of pounds (yes, I really did spend that much) and stacked my educational resources in a cupboard to gather dust.
Fast forward 10 years or so and I opened the cupboard of denial and shattered home school dreams. An avalanche of redundant resources landed on my foot, prompting me to think about what things I did actually get value for money from.
For example, Cuisenaire Rods, when you actually know how to use them.
It took me years to think of what to do with these bits of coloured plastic, apart from the obvious 1+2=3 (my idea) or make a sword and poke your sister repeatedly (my son’s idea). Once I did get inspired to do more, these little plastic rods turned out to be a good investment. Good job, because I’d forked out nearly £30 on the extra mega large tub.
Here’s one of my favourite uses for them – multiplication. Children at school are expected to master all their tables up to 12 x 12 by the end of year four. Mine certainly didn’t know them all at that age and have turned out fine, so don’t panic; just get out the good old Cuisenaire Rods.
8 x 4 seen as 8 lines of 4 (an array). This helps children see multiplication as repeated addition
8 x 4 draw round and count the dots to make multiplication visual to help with understanding.
Children often find their own ways of doing things – encourage it. A child I was tutoring this week split 8×4 up this way. Not what I had in mind, but it works and we should respect and encourage different ways of looking at a problem.
8 x 4 and 4 x 8 give the same answer. These bits of plastic help children to understand this ‘commutative property’. That’s just a fancy way of saying you can flip the numbers round.
If your child is struggling to master basic maths skills, a tutor can help. At Home-School Tutoring, we are always upgrading our skills so we can offer our students the best help possible. We strive to find innovative techniques to create a fun and visual learning environment.