Teaching by stimulating the child's mind

When I was at school, there were still 12 pennies in a shilling (and 20 shillings in a £) so from the age of seven I was expected to count in bases 12 and 20 in addition to base 10. How did I do it? I imagined a big pile of pennies, which, when they reached the height of 12 got turned into a shiny silver shilling (not that I often saw a shilling, they didn’t circulate, they were kept aside for use in electricity meters). As I did my calculations I imagined pennies being put on or taken off the pile.

Any child who didn’t use their imagination in this way that must have been an enormous disadvantage. They must have faced enormous difficulties counting in 3 bases (10, 12 and 20). Later, when I was 8 we were expected to count in bases 14 and 16 (there being 16 ounces in a pound, and 14 pounds in a stone). Then at age 9 we were asked to count in bases 22, and 8, there being 22 yards in a chain and 8 furlongs in a mile (The chain was actually a decimal unit, as there were 100 links in a chain, and 10 chains in a furlong). We were expected to count in all these different bases before we reached the age of ten years! And we did. Why? Because we rose to meet what was expected of us. This is why it is so important not to dumb down maths.
At Puppet Maths we believe in academic excellence. We will not dumb anything down. We believe in making academic ideas and concepts accessible to the young mind, and we have found the use of puppets to be the ideal vehicle to achieve this.
Puppets stimulate children’s imaginations, and once they are imagining then they can see piles of pennies, or lines of numbers, or patterns in their mind’s eye.