Finny has been playing Numberblocks since he was two years old. Now aged 6, he loves the challenge of making the larger Numberblocks with only the limited blocks we have. He sticks tape on spare blocks to make them fit with whatever game he’s playing.

Resources

Method

What is multiplication?

The basic idea of multiplication is repeated addition. You take one number and add it together a number of times. This is why multiplication is sometimes called “times“.

Example: 3 multiplied by 4 .

3 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 12. We took the number 3 and added it together 4 times.

Multiplication is explained in more detail in the post ‘Two Times Table Shoe Shop‘.

Four on the Floor

As always, this was entirely child led play. He’s been playing this independently for weeks, but I’ve only just got round to recording him. Finny made sure he had the Numberblocks needed for the four times table. He’s always excited when there are new numbers he needs to make.

He also wrote the number facts as _ x 4 = _

He asked me to play the song while he played along. My favourite part was when some of the Numberblocks fell to pieces as Finny moved them, but he just kept going.

When Finny watched the video back, he was worried that it looked like you had to write down the answers to sing the song. He asked me to video him again, to show you don’t need any equipment to enjoy the song.

DfES Outcomes for EYFS and National Curriculum (2013)

Numeracy Year 3 programme of study

Number – multiplication and division

  • recall and use multiplication and division facts for the 4 times table