MUS Gamma and Delta

[babygemma]

I've never used MUS but I was able to borrow someone's BETA dvd and liked what I saw. I was just wondering if anyone could tell me briefly (or in great detail if you so wish) how Steve Demme teaches mulitiplication in Gamma and division in Gamma in Delta with the blocks or however way he teaches. My oldest is finishing 2nd grade in PS and he seems to be able to do simple multiplication and division by counting up and down but when I asked him to do 56 divide by 7 after he gave me the answer by counting because he doesn't know his multip. facts yet, he could not give me 56 divide by 8 and doesn't seem to understand the relationship. Does Steve teach it in the way that kids understand the relationship between multip and division so they can eventually do it backward and forward?

 

Thanks for your help.

[Quad Shot Academy]

It has been a while since we have done Gamma, but as I recall, he used the blocks for all the problems in Gamma and Delta so the kids could actually see what they are doing. I recall that he even used blocks for division problems in the hundreds. The kids memorize the multiplication problems group by group and then the next year, do the inverse with division. There are lots of fill in the blank type problems 3x_=15 so 15/3=5, so I definitely think they understand the relationship. HTH!

[Leanna Tomlinson]

Multiplication is addressed in two ways. First, there is the skip counting CD which has catchy songs that skip count the numbers up to x(10). e.g.

3,6,9,12,15,18,21,24,and 27, 30 and we're done. (to the tune of Jingle Bells)

 

The MUS blocks are all shaped like rods with "unit" squares representing the total number. Five is a rod of 5 units together, 4 is a rod of 4 units together. Each block has its own color. Using the blocks, he shows how each multiplication problem can be represented by a rectangle.

 

5x4 is 5 over and 4 up. He also shows how this can be accomplished using 5 four blocks, or 4 five blocks. The solution is obviously the number of units in the rectangle, and at first, the answer is written in the middle of a rectangle representing the problem. The answer can be found by skip counting by 4's or 5's if the facts are not memorized. The relationship between the numbers is always obvious because of the blocks, and the questions in the worksheet are asked in a way to make this very clear to the student.

 

When the student is introduced to division, Demme, again, starts with the rectangle. A worksheet may have a diagram of the same rectangle with a 20 inside and a 4 on the outiside. The child then has to figure out what is the length of the other side of the rectangle (5). The typical division sign IS two sides of a rectangle, so he relates most of the first problems to the area of a rectangle. The relationship between all of the numbers is crystal clear for my dc when using the math blocks. For most of my dc, I have not even had to point out the relationship; they just understood by seeing.

 

I still have needed to do separate facts drills for my dc for complete memorization, but the relationships between the numbers and "fact families" are made very clear by using the MUS blocks.

 

HTH,

Leanna