On his wall - the number chart

I might do a series of posts on the stuff I've got up on his bedroom wall/cupboard door. It's my way of sneaking in some learning and it's working so far. I'll start with the number chart.

I think I put up this number chart in early June when he was recovering from his HFM/cold (but it was made a few weeks/mths before that). It was before I realised teacher had moved on beyond the number 20.

I decided to make my own chart instead of purchase one. I wanted it clear and simple. Store bought ones tend to have other bits of distractions like words printed on it, or pictures.

I also wanted it colour coded my way to make it like a pattern. All those ending with the same digit are of the same colour. Store bought ones are sometimes coloured differently e.g. those in the 50 series are a different colour from those in the 60 series.

Back then it was my intention to teach him skip counting (counting in 10s) and for him to learn numbers beyond 20. I didn’t know how to teach him numbers beyond 20 in a fun way. It’d be rather boring to do 20, 21, 22, 23... So I had hoped that by putting up the chart, he’d see a pattern and learn it himself. Through some short lessons (5 min or less) and through lessons in school, he’s learnt to associate the number symbols beyond 20.

He understands roughly which number is larger/more than another. I realised this in an unintentional way – through sipping water! You see, it’s hard to get him to drink enough water. So I state the number of sips he has to take each time. When I state a large number (e.g. 20) compared to his usual 11 or 7 sips, he complains! I’ve turned this into a lesson! Sometimes I intentionally state a really large number like 33, (to which he protests) so that I can then state a smaller number (e.g. 28) or sometimes a larger number (e.g. 38) to check his understanding. But sometimes I can’t tell from his reaction e.g. I bring it down to 15, but he renegotiates for 16.

I’m not just relying on the number chart as it might be a bit abstract for him. So I’m using the Montessori wooden cubes that I bought, to make those numbers a bit more concrete. For e.g. he now understands how much more is a thousand relative to a hundred (a hundred and a thousand are big numbers as it is).

But now that a friend has lent me the Montessori manual, I might have to revamp that chart. I might instead make it so that each row ends with a digit 9 instead. That’s to introduce him to the decimal system. I think that comes in handy when he later learns to add two or more digit numbers (hundreds, tens, units). I’m not so sure about it at the moment, so will have to think about it some more.