Conkering the 3 times table

Across the road from our new house we have a big park with a church in the middle.  One of my favourite things to do there is to collect conkers.  Conker Trees are horse chestnut trees.  They drop horse chestnuts down onto the grass.  Inside the big, spiky, green shell there is a little, shiny brown nut which is called a conker.

Patchy loves getting conkers too.   On the first day we kept them in our shoes.  Then we had too many so I used my pockets.  Then there were too many for my pockets.  On our last day gathering I got 325 conkers!

I wanted to learn my three times table so we chose to conker my 3 times table - literally! First I laid 30 conkers out in rows of three.

First I used a ruler to skip count in threes down my rows.

Then I pretended my conkers were eggs and the patterns on the carpet were nests.  I put three eggs in each nest and jumped from one to the other skip counting in threes.

 Then I gathered them all and said my three times table as I put each group of three in the middle.

Then I set up a .... CONKER SHOP!  Patchy would get me a number of conkers and I would tell him how much they cost.  In my shop each conker cost THREE HIGH FIVES.  So if he gave me 12 conkers I would tell him it cost 36 high fives.  Or if he gave me two conkers it would be six high fives.

He carefully gathered his little conkers.














And carefully counted them out for me.

This was an awesome activity because I could help Patchy learn some counting AND practise my maths too.

Even Finny had a go.  By the end I had really conkered my threes.

Here I am the Conker Master!