Working Together, a Math Gnome Story by Melisa Nielsen

One day King Equals decided he needed a new counting tower.  The old one would be donated to the kingdom to expand their library.  The king looked far and wide for a contractor to build this special tower.  Another king recommended Sir Enufstuff and after talking to him, the king decided to hire him.

“Sir Enufstuff, I have my four best gnomes to work for you.  If you work with them together, the project should be built quickly.”

“Thank you King Equals, but I have my own ideas about staff.  I will use your gnomes but not together.  They will each have different shifts and you will see that I will far exceed your expectations.”

The king wasn’t sure, as he believed many hands make lighter work, but he trusted the other king’s recommendation and allowed Sir Enufstuff to begin.

Sir Enufstuff called the four gnomes together.  Plus, Minus, Times and Divide.  They tried to explain to Sir Enufstuff that they could move mountains togeth...

Question: If my child doesn't have their times tables memorized, should I hold him/her back until they do?

Answer: No. In Waldorf, there really is no concept of holding children back like there would be in public school. Of course we always talk about the history & language arts material fitting the child's age, but what about math? I have found that some children pick up math quickly and others are a little poky about it. I firmly stand behind Waldorf math and the way it is laid out and the concepts are introduced. We wrote our math book based on those concepts - all Steiner.

The thought behind it is mastery, but not in the same way that we would in a public school setting.  There are no timed tests. We allow the children to make a times table sheet and we give them the space they need to learn them. Some children are in 4th grade, others in 7th! They will get tired of looking them up and commit them to memory. I have watched it happen with my children at different times. Practice to...

The topic of “whole to parts” is pretty central to the Waldorf method of teaching – more than just on the math front, as children advance in age the whole to parts theme is evident in their study of zoology and botany as well as other places in the curriculum.  When we teach using whole to parts, it is easy for the children to pick up everything around them as a whole.  For instance the number 12 doesn't stand alone, many things come together to make up 12, and 12 is also a component of many other larger parts.  12 can be 6 X 2, it can be 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2, it can be 4 X 3 - in our story we are looking at 12 as part of 48.  I hope you will enjoy how it comes together.

Today we are focusing on the introduction of math to a child in grade one.  I like to start the introduction with Roman numerals during the tail end of the letter introduction block via the container story I wrote for the grade, and then do a combination number qualities block before I start the introduction of th...