Multiplication boards...

Yesterday I decided to clean out the Montessori cupboard, I managed to re-organise it, there is quite a bit of stuff that we are not using at the moment but I am not ready to get rid of yet so that has been packed and sent to the back. All the continent work got put into one draw, I really need to find some suitable boxes and sort it all out properly, I have been collecting things for his continent boxes for so long I had forgotten about some of the things we have. I also found the mulitplication and division boards so of course Ebi-kun wanted to work with them.

We got out the multiplication board and I gave him the presentation starting with the 5 card then Ebi-kun wanted to try with the 10 card.

First the child slips the card into the side of the board, you can see the 10 card on the photo above.

Then move the red marker above the 1 and place beads in all the holes below the one, when it is finished say out loud, 1 times 10 is 10.

Move the red counter to the above the 2 and repeat until you have done the whole board.

Once he had got the hang of it I printed out a sheet with the times tables written on it so that he could write in his answers as he did it. It is great when you see the penny drop and he realises that there are patterns to the answers or when he declared that the 5 times table is like skip counting with the beads. I think that if the children discover these patterns themselves rather than be told they are more likely to remember and then discover other similar patterns.