Montessori at our home - 5 Square of Pythogoras (Decanomial)

The cricket fever is not over yet.  In fact, in the coaching excesses that are all over, I am constantly hearing that my son wants to play for the Indian cricket team!!!

I discussed this with one of my uncles and he just said that allow him to explore "most" of the "classes" and withdraw from those that he is not actively interested at a later point.  Guess I will have to do that.  Few weeks back it was Chess mania and now cricket.  Most likely the next is going to be Tennis with Wimbledon matches coming up.

Back to our Montessori that we have not been able to pursue so vigorously since the school reopened.

Finally, oh yes, finally I completed the Square of Pythogoras.

In India, we have neat Mathematics square notebook 1cmX1cm squares.  We pasted a sheet on to cardstock and then cut them for the various dimensions.  Since the squares were all 1cmX1cm, this is probably the easiest material to make.  However, we did not stick it on different coloured card stock for instance

1 - Red
2 - Green
3 - Pink (Orange for our beads)
4 - Yellow
5 - Light blue
6 - Purple (Ours is violet)
7 - White
8 - Brown
9 - Dark Blue
10 - Golden Yellow

I am however planning to ask my son to colour the "white square side" of the decanomial with the above colours.  So, then, it becomes easy to show that

2x3 Green is same as 3x2 Orange.

and so on...

My son had his friend over at our place and we all arranged this.   Here is the work in progress....

And, phew it is complete (the blue Dupatta of mine was enough to spread the whole thing across)

Here is the close up

And, we did end up doing the multiplication fact practice by -
1) Placing the Golden bead bars - essentially telling that the bead bar and this is pretty similar
2) By doing 6x7 by "counting the total number of squares inside the 6x7 rectangle
3) We also started doing the "Square of Pythogoras" but haven't been able to complete it

The kids found it quite tiring after just the above.  Hmmm....may be it is an age thing that they want to grab the "content" faster than before.

We need to use the squares a lot more so I would prefer to use the decanomial or something similar.  In fact, in my mind I am already planning on using this instead of the beaded square for the Binomial presentation.  But, for now, lets get the rest of the square related facts, and sum of 1 to 10 numbers etc in place.

TBD
1) Complete Pythogoras square
2) Complete Square presentation and repeat
3) Sum of first n numbers - lets see if he can get some simple facts in place

Thats it for now!

Montessori at our home - 4 - Great Lessons Hindu Vedic Style

After a successful homemade checkerboard, my son now is looking for challenges and I am honestly not able to cope up. 

My other struggle right now is to "wean" my son from "cricket mania". Like every other Indian, my son has taken now to cricket. It has tremendously improved his mental addition and subtraction, but at a cost of being close to not wanting to do anything else at all - either play matches or watch matches. Just hoping that all this would stop or at least slow down next week as his school reopens.

Meanwhile, I downloaded some of the Great Lessons from Monteaco.  

Here is the first one Great Lesson 1 - God with no hands (Universe and creation)

In my case, I was aware of "Purusha Suktam" that says that all that emanates is from "Purusha" -

पुरुषं एवेशकं सर्वं
यत भूतं यत च भव्यं

and in fact, found a beautiful similarity with the above explanation and "Mantrapushpam" in the Vedas.

योपां पुष्पं वेद पुष्पवान प्रजावान पशुमान भवति
चन्द्रमावा अपां पुष्पं पुष्पवान प्रजावान पशुमान भवति

अग्निर्वा अपां आयतनम्  ...

वायुर्वा अपां आयतनं ...

चन्द्रमा , पर्जन्यो , नक्षत्राणि, संवत्सरो
 

Where everything seems to be derived from the "Cosmic Waters". These have got denser and denser to give rise to air, fire, as a result the stars and the elements. There is an interesting presentation on the meaning of Mantrapushpam here Mantrapushpam explained in English.

But to my surprise some things were already on his mind - for instance - how do you think the clouds and the sun came. "God made them", prompt was his reply. Well, over the last 6 years he has had tremendous opportunities to hear the word God. But, such a casual answer made me wonder whether he was even ready for the "Big Bang". 

Still, we went ahead and we have now kind of come to a common point called "Purusha". The enormous space that condenses. We also got terms such as Prakriti introduced, rest of the story was very much similar to what Maria Montessori has explained.

My son would not recite Vedas right now - not until we go through the Upanayanam process that will happen in due course.

Back to the lessons, I guess, I am more confused about the timelines since, like many practising Sanatana Dharmis, I find it difficult to cope up with the eons and eons explained in the Puranas and transposing them and making it appeal to the child in a way in which he is able to get

1) A hold on the original Vedic pronouncements

2) Being able to manage it with the practical reality of theories abounding our world such as big bang and steady state

3) Being able to verify it with literature available on carbon dating etc

I would not yet like to reveal anomalies that are abounding in our times of interpreted, mis-interpreted history, archeology etc. Not for a 6 year old yet. I just would like to show some connections, rest is upto him to tie some of these anomalous loose ends later in his life!