I have been looking forward to this block ever since last spring, when we had our Qualities of Numbers block and left our story friends, Sapphire and Rose, who had just arrived in the beautiful and strange Land of Numeria. Four weeks ago, we rejoined our friends inside the mysterious mountain kingdom, where they met the four Process Gnomes, who help the Great and Wise King Equals to keep order in the gnome kingdom.
My primary resource for this block was the Quantities of Numbers lesson block from Marsha Johnson's free files. I made a few changes to her ideas and borrowed some things from Waldorf Essentials and from the East African training manuals. But other than that, this was pretty much straight from Marsha.
And what a hit it was! My daughter adored this block! She loved every one of the little gnomes and their stories. She especially loved all the manipulative math activities.
Here are our little gnomies with their king. I actually wasn't going to do anything with King Equals other than mention his name, but Sariah begged and begged to hear about him, so I stayed up entirely too late one night sewing another little gnome.
And on the backs of their cloaks--the process signs.
First we did Gnome Divide. In this block each gnome has a different temperament that corresponds to his or her mathematical process. Marsha Johnson pegged Divide as a calm and methodical phlegmatic, but I concurred with other curriculum writers who feel he is choleric--fiery, passionate, bossy, and obsessed with fairness, but with kindness and caring underneath it all. I told Sariah that Divide was just like her big brother Dallin. Because Divide likes everything to be fair and even, he is the perfect gnome to sort piles of things into even little groupings. He likes to tell everybody what to do and where to go and make sure that everyone gets their fair share.
We started with division so that we could move from whole to parts with our work. In one little story, Gnome Divide found a pile of acorns in the forest and wanted to share them with his squirrel friends. He had to figure out how many to give to each squirrel so that everyone would have a fair share.
I actually didn't initially tell Sariah that division had to be fair and equal, but she got it all on her own right from the beginning.
We also looked at different ways of breaking numbers down into parts. This was the number 21. We used manipulatives and came up with various combinations of "parts". Three 7's, two 10's and a 1, twenty-one 1's, etc.
Teaching Gnome Divide's sign was the funnest thing ever! I gave this stick to Sariah and told her to put it exactly in the middle of the table. Then I gave her two chocolate chip cookies and asked her to split them evenly between the two of us, one on her side of the table and one on mine. Voila, we had a division sign! And then we ate the cookies!
And she drew the stick and cookies in her main lesson book, accompanied by two napkins and two glasses of milk.
We practiced making division signs in pans of rice with our feet, elbows, etc.
That week during free painting time, she painted Divide.
The next week, we focused on Gnome Add, our calm, mellow, methodical old gnome friend who has all the patience in the world for counting slowly and carefully. We did alot of counting that week, including counting to 100 several times. I discovered that my sweet, sanguine Sariah doesn't have much patience for counting by one's. It was the perfect lead-in to our next gnome.
Gnome Add picked apples for the mine donkeys and had to keep adding them to the basket (and keep track of how many there were.)
Gnomes Divide and Add had to pick up (and count) a pile of rocks that had fallen off the mountainside near the Treasure Cave. Then, they had to sort the rocks equally into sacks to give to friends to use to build fireplaces.
Sariah made a plus sign out of jewels (notice the patterns).
And another plus sign out of blocks...
Some little story problems we did with manipulatives and then illustrated and wrote out in her book.
Gnome Times was Sariah's favorite! I loved Marsha Johnson's stories and characterizations for this gnome, because it described my little girl to a T. Times is energetic and fun, loves to skip and dance all over the place, do cartwheels and hang upside down from tree branches. Most of all, she loves to count quickly and to get the job done faster. Just like Sariah, who the week before was trying to count by 2's before we'd even learned it, simply because she had no patience for counting by 1's. Gnome Times wears sunny yellow because it is such a happy color.
Making a pattern with jewels and counting by 2's.
Counting by 10's with the help of Gnome Times produces another beautiful patterned work of art.
Gnome Times hosts a dinner for her friends. Skip counting helps her quickly figure out how many portions of food she has on the table. (We used real food...carrots, raisins, and beans.)
How many butterfly wings are there? Gnome Times can figure this out quickly if she counts by 2's.
We made waffles for breakfast and Sariah discovered all on her own that we could count by 2's or 4's to figure out how many waffles we made. (I didn't even plan that one to be a math lesson!)
We played with jewels a lot in our various math scenarios, since the Math Gnomes work in the Treasure Cave, choosing, sorting, and counting jewels to bring to King Equals.
Last of all was Gnome Minus. (For fun, we glued wool onto to each gnome to make his or her hair.) Gnome Minus is the kind, sad, forgetful melancholic of the bunch, always losing her jewels through the holes in the pockets of her un-mended clothing.
A super fun activity from Marsha Johnson was this blindfold walk. Sariah had to follow the rope on the floor while dropping jewels out of her little dish. Every time she dropped a jewel or two, she had to tell me how many she had left.
We also took jewels out of this circle by 5's and she had to keep track of how many were left. Then we put the circle back together counting by 5's.
Some of our illustrated and written-out subtraction problems.
We modeled all the process signs to put on the wall.
King Equals arrived in her book at the end of the block.
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