Catching Up...Math Block - Math Factor Tree

Math Block: Math Factor Tree by Marsha Johnson

of the Waldorf Home Educators Yahoo Group

Math was so bland when I learned it in a traditional school, so I'm thrilled that waldorf focuses on not only multi-sensory learning, but also a true deep understanding of the concepts of math. One of the best recommendations I have for all you waldorf inspired homeschooling mamas out there is to join Marsha Johnson's waldorf group. Even if you never read an email posted to the group, you can access her free files, which are wonderful! She is so generous to share them with us for no charge. I found the pdf file for the Math Factor Tree by going into:

- Files
- Age Specific Curriculum
- Grade 2
- factortrees.pdf

Since I worked mainly with gnomes last year with the 4 processes, yet it was fall and we had plenty of acorns and nuts to count, I decided to combine the two to add to Marsha's skeleton. We were also reading the story of King Arthur, so I made up a story of Merlin (and baby Arthur) who traveled through the forest one day and came upon two little squirrels who had no home to call their own. They were also very hungry as all the acorns had disappeared from the forest. Merlin conjured up a magic acorn and placed it in the soil. The acorn grew right before their very eyes into a Magic Math Factor Tree...

The one trunk of the tree became a One Tree...


The girls copied it into their MLB's.


We have been practicing form drawing and have been using the forms to decorate the edges of their MLB's. This form was very hard, but they both wanted to attempt it, so they did!


As our week continued, we embellished the story and the girls retold and added to it. Soon, the deer and wolves came into the forest to share in the bounty.


The girls took this picture of their crayons after school - creativity abounds!


We also added a lot of baking to this block. This is our homemade zucchini bread using a gigantic organic zucchini from my sister's prolific garden in Colorado! Mmmmmm....


Soon the Magic Math Factor Tree split into two and became a Two Tree...


Then a Three Tree... (this tree is drawn in several ways - 3= 1+1+1 and 3=2+1...)

More baking...we actually baked 10-12 different types of holiday cookies for a dog rescue fundraiser. We doubled the recipe and then cut it in half so they could each measure out the same amount - lol!

Meanwhile...the Magic Math Factor Tree split into Four... (4=1+1+1+1, 4=2+2, 4=3+1 or 1+3, etc)

And five...

And six...all the way up to twelve!

We stopped there - lol! This particular block in our math block took about a week and we had a lot of fun with it.

We started to read the King Arthur book by Roger Lancelyn Green, but it just didn't work for us at this age. It is a version we will return to when the girls are a bit older. However, I returned to a wonderful version of the story which was a great buy by my mother-in-law and is hard to find (it is printed in England for our friends across the sea and seems to be more available there).

If you can find it, it's called, "Knights of the Grail" by Linda Proud. It's published by St. James Publishing. I first read it to the girls when they were 5 years old and they enjoyed it immensely. Their daddy had been telling them stories of King Arthur and Sir Gawain and Sir Lancelot since they were very small. It is broken up into very short chapters, so makes a good night time read aloud.