Math - The Four Processes

We started our Four Processes math block this week.

I'm getting ideas for our Four Processes math block from the books:
Teaching Mathematics in Rudolf Steiner Schools for Classes 1-8, by Ron Jarmon
Teaching Mathematics for First and Second Grades in Waldorf Schools, by Ernst Schuberth

This is our first week of the block.  We did some practice writing the numbers because I noticed that Yoav was writing some of them backwards.  I wrote out the numbers 1-20 for him to copy and, as you can see, it was too much fun for him and he kept going :)

Yoav's numbers up to 70 (stars between to help keep space between numbers - idea from Donna Simmons)

We are also doing word problems based on ideas in Ron Jarmon's book.  The first day, I used an example straight from his book.  He includes a word problem for addition, subtraction, division and multiplication all based on the same story line.  So I sat next to Yoav and we each folded our papers into quarters and we did the problems in one quadrant each.  Next week, when I introduce the symbols, we'll go back to these papers and add the equations below the pictures.

Top page is exercise from Jarmon's book; bottom one is my example below.

I'll give my story line (the bottom piece of paper):
1) Mama Bird found this many (I drew 8 lines in the first box) twigs to make her nest, but she wants this many (I wrote 17).  How many more does she need?  He'd answer and we'd both write the answer on the right.
2) Mama collected this many (drew 12 pieces of string in the second box) pieces of string for her nest, but only used this many (wrote a 7).  How many will she put back in the pile?
3) Mama is feeding her babies.  She has this many worms (draw 12 worms). Each baby needs this many (write 3) worms.  How many babies does she have?
4) Mama wanted this many (draw 16 bugs) bugs.  Each time she flies down to collect the bugs, she can only fit this many (write 4) in her mouth.  How many trips does she have to do?

Yoav LOVED these.  He wanted to do more each time we finished, which we didn't, mostly b/c I wouldn't be able to make up the story on the spot.

Yoav counting by 5s.

We also did skip counting on the balance beam - counting by 2s, 3s, 5s, 10s, (and then by 100s, 1000s, millions by Yoav's addition) as we walked forward and backward on the balance beam.  The 2s, 3s to 30, 5s, and 10s Yoav can do very fast.  By his choice, he did 3s up to 90 or so and beyond about 30, I could see him counting in his head.  This is to help memorize the multiplication tables "by rote", as Steiner says to do.  Ideally by third grade, a child should be able to quickly say the answer to any random multiplication question up to 12x12.

I need to spend more time on these exercises.  Schuberth has some fun exercises, like the +2 one, where I say a number and the child says what number you have to add 2 to in order to get my number.

Next week I'll introduce the symbols.