Music and maths.

Yesterday we had a dentist appointment first thing, piano lessons in the middle of the day and K had ballet (catch up for the lesson she missed on Saturday when we were away) and then Scouts immediately afterwards.  In between those things, we went to the library and I finished reading White Boots to the girls, just in time for the start of the Winter Olympics!  K also dug out Basher Maths and told me she'd like to carry on with working through it, so I had a look at that.

Today we were out all morning (LLL Toddler meeting), then came home, popped to the shops, had lunch and then went out again briefly (a friend who sells Phoenix cards was having an 'at home' day and I wanted to stock up).  So it wasn't until mid-afternoon that we got down to doing anything.  

Having looked at the Basher Maths book and looking back at the things in K's file of things she's done, I'd discovered that we'd got as far as multiplication.  So, when we got in I asked K if she wanted to play Vapoosh!  She did and so did M, so we had a couple of games of that (with a strop and stomp off mid-game from M, but K & I carried on without her and she eventually calmed down and came back to join in again).  M won the first game with a Vapoosh! (i.e. 4 sixes) and K the second with 12 points.

M's Vapoosh!

Not entirely coincidentally, I had listened to a programme on Radio 4 last night called How to Teach Maths, which included an interview with one of the authors of Maths for Mums and Dads, which I had also had a look at yesterday.  The programme focused mostly on arithmetic, including multiplication handily.  As a result of looking at Maths for Mums and Dads and confirmed by listening to that programme, I got some big sheets of squared paper out and we talked about multiplication using the grid method.  We talked through a couple of sums, 27 x 11 and divided up a big 27 by 11 rectangle to show that it was the same as 10 x 10 plus 10 x 10 plus 10 x 7 plus 27 x 1.  Then I showed her the long division version of the same sum.

Not sure how well that'll show up, but ho hum!

Then we did one more together, before I gave her a sum do have a go at:  28 x 16.  Before she started I suggested she had an estimate so that she would have a good idea of what to expect as an answer and with very little prompting she came up with 30 x 15 would be about the same and worked out 3 x 15 x 10 to get 450.  She then wanted to be left alone and drew a grid on one side of the paper and on the other wrote in very large letters:  448.  I suggested that we could do a bit more practice of this sort of thing, but K wants to keep going with the book and then come back later.  When I asked if she saw that learning tables up to 10 times is very handy for this sort of thing and she agreed that they are.  From playing Vapoosh! today I can see that she is getting quicker with them, although there's still some way to go before she's confident with all of them.

While K & I were doing grid method multiplication, M had popped round to a neighbour, as arranged yesterday and he brought his French horn round for M to have a try.  So far she still prefers the serpent she tried at the Bates Collection in Oxford, but the French horn is in second place and easier to find a teacher and an instrument!  She's going to have a go on her friend J's trumpet before deciding what she would like to learn.  We also asked their piano teacher if he knew of any brass teachers and he's going to look into that for us and there are a few other people I can ask too.