Reflection on the activity of Creating a Table

These days I am attending the classes of Maths Strands , that mainly focus on the philosophy and the conceptual learning of maths that can integrate with the real life.’

In the discussion about the activities our mentor asked us about to engage a child in the CREATION OF TABLE instead of forcing him to LEARN THE TABLE.

Majority of mothers like me ….. :) focusing on the rote learning of tables and ask their children forcefully to memorize all the tables , well to learn the tables help us a lot but to learn or make children learn without knowing the logic or the pattern of the table is quite useless.

Few months before I have placed table charts in my room and asked my 6 year old, to learn the tables one by one , as the tables had not been introduced in his class so being an efficient mother ( ironically saying :) ) I was in the way to make my child able to know and memorize all the tables before the time that it may come in his syllabus .

Now I changed my strategy and keep my child engaging to recognize and generate different patterns , I give him a series of different shapes, and ask him to make any pattern for me to continue. We observe a lot of different patterns that are in the air around us . And Finally I ask him to to create a table of 2, First think about it how the next number comes after every number and then try to make  table of your own.

Just with in two days of focusing on different number patterns my 6 year old son has now able to make a table of any number . What a sense of achievement he got ... “ I can create a table ! ” :)

This significant strategy overcome my past six months efforts to make him able to learn tables.

and I am sure that after some time he will In-sha-Allah learn the tables by heart but not forcefully but by his own interest .

And the most important fact that  I observe during this activity that “not only Maths is all about PATTERNS but the Life is all about Pattern. And the best Pattern of life is given to us by our beloved Prophet (PBUH) may Allah SWT help us to follow and to guide our children to follow the right pattern   (ameen) .