My next line of enquiry took me to the 5 times table. I experience 5 very differently from 4. As I mentioned in my previous blog entry 'Numbers are beautiful', to me 5 is yellow/orange, sparky and alive. I thought for a while how I could represent 5 as a shape and a star immediately seemed appropriate (obviously one with 5 points) so I printed and cut out 10 yellow stars and arranged them in different ways. A pyramid of 10 stars, to me, perfectly represents the 5 times table. As the numbers grow, the shape expands from one star ever outwards, representing the expansive, extrovert nature of 5. I created some pictures, below. You'll see that in each picture I've replaced some of the yellow stars with white ones to show products of the 5 times table, for example 6 white stars represents 6 x 5, a 'trapezium shaped' group of 4 stars represents 4 x 5, and so on.
What I like about this arrangement is that it represents 10 x 5, the final product of the 5 times table but at the same time all the products of the 5 times table can be represented, depending on how the stars are arranged.
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1 x 5 = 5
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6 x 5 = 30
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4 x 5 = 20 |
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