MRS. VINA SHERWOOD ADAMS by MRS. VINA SHERWOOD ADAMS

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 14, 1915

MRS. VINA SHERWOOD ADAMS

By MRS. VINA SHERWOOD ADAMS

Our Little Table, and How It Solves Some Home Problems—No. 3

MRS. VINA SHERWOOD ADAMS

HERE are some suggestions to mothers who are instructing a child at home. We often hear mothers say, “I can teach my child to read, but the progression in numbers is so slow that I can’t make it interesting.” Come with me to our little table and play numbers for a while. In a half-pint fruit jar we have some beans. There are red, jet black, and brown ones. How pretty they look! We turn them out into some pie tins. You are to take the same number of beans as 1. I take up 2 red beans, place them in an even row on the table. You do the same. I then place 1 more red bean a short distance away. We all count silently and reach in our tins for enough red beans for our answer. Then I step to a blackboard or large slate on the wall and tell you, This is the way the chalk says it:—

Two and one are three.

2 + 1 = 3.

Sometime later in the day I shall place 2 + 1 = on the board, and shall ask you to work it out in beans. When several days have passed and you have learned the number relations of several groups, I shall place this on the board for you to work out with either beans, corn, or blocks:—

2 + 2 = 1 + 2 = 3 + 1 = 2 + 1 =

Select red and yellow kernels. The red may be used for your answers.

Some other day as I am doing up my morning’s work and you are fresh and bright, I shall call out occasionally to you some numbers, as 3 + 1, which you may work out in red beans, then 3 + 3 black beans, 4 + 2 brown beans, etc. After a quick glance down the rows to see if every line is correct, I shall hand you some small square pieces of paper, and this time you may tell me how the pencil tells these numbers.

Today we order our groceries. Let us tell some number stories. I shall order 2 lemons at 2 cents each. The yellow kernels are our lemons, the red ones our pennies. I shall pay the grocer — for the lemons. Now you may tell me a story about 2 apples and 2 cents, and with your corn learn if my answer is correct. Again, I see 2 windows on the south side of this room. On the north side are 3 windows. There are — windows in our room. Now you may tell me a number story about something you see. Busy mother, cannot you pare vegetables or apples and at the same time exchange a few number stories like these?

Perhaps I hear some mother say, “I’d feel foolish fussing around with corn and beans.” Well, if you would, the children would not. They thoroughly enjoy the number play, especially when the groups are placed on the board to be worked out with objects. Many a busy half hour can be spent in this way without further aid from you than simply placing the numbers on the board, and glancing to see if results are correct. Subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions may all be taught in this interesting manner.

My first reading lesson after learning my letters was—

I go up. You go up. We go up.

I’ve never forgotten it, it was so thoroughly drilled into my mind, though the words meant nothing to me. But how different are children taught now! When a child learns the word snow or hill, by pictures and every means possible he is led to see snow or the hill as he reads. So with numbers; when he sees the symbols 2 + 1, he should see two objects and yet one other object, instead of the digits 2 and 1, which mean nothing to him unless he has caught the relation between objects and figures. Your older child who may be having a discouraging time with fractions in the fourth or fifth grade work, can be greatly enlightened as to the relative size of 1-3 and 1-6, or 1-8 and 1-4, etc., by taking him over this simple object routine. Unless the child understands these relations, fractions are merely a mechanical process which he must memorize if he ever does correct work in the subject, as I memorized my first reading lessons — lasting, perhaps, but most wonderfully uninteresting.

To mothers who may think they cannot arrange for time to instruct the wee folks in Bible or nature, let me give a thought which I read from the pen of a

successful mother on a farm, “Learn what things may be slighted and what things must not be crowded out” in conducting your social and household duties. Would it not be interesting if some of you mothers who have helpful ideas on the above quotation would write them out for publication, so the rest of us could profit by your experience?

If the editor thinks my missive to you worthy of publication, perhaps I can tell you some other time of more uses we make of our little table.

Should any mother care for a set of the animal pictures mentioned in the previous article, she should send within ten days after receiving this paper, fifteen one-cent stamps for postage and material, and I will gladly prepare them for her.