- Gaurish Borkar
- Dec 30, 2019
- 4 min read
Mathematics is a tricky subject. Those who love, enjoy it much and those who don’t, feel it’s boring. I lost interest in mathematics while in 7th class. Based on what I remember, it was mainly due to lack of understanding of negative numbers. By nature, I am kinaesthetic person and therefore I refuse to accept anything unless understood thoroughly. Generally, just memorization doesn’t work for me and the same thing happened about multiplication of negative numbers. Our teacher presented them as rules and I refused to accept them at face value. One year later my cousin grandfather started living with us and he had great interest in teaching. Moreover, his concepts in mathematics were extremely clear and he could answer all my crazy questions. This retriggered my interest in mathematics. The whole journey was so joyful that I wish everyone gets a grandfather like him who is at home to help with fundamental questions in studies.
Later, when I was in 9th I was introduced to Vedic Math by my close friend. At that time, I thoroughly enjoyed it and started using it to an extend where I completely forgot methods taught in the school. Few years back I started taking courses in Vedic math and I repeatedly received questions about relevance of the course in school. Even though these methods cannot be directly used in school today, some of the methods are being included in school curriculum and therefore I decided to author books as per the curriculum.
While developing Vedic Math book for a particular class I realized that numbers being abstract, it’s also important to explain some of the concepts through art and craft. Therefore, I decided to also add Creative Math as a part of this book. This is because learning is much more effective through Activities and Games for many.
When I started thinking about developing books as per the curriculum, next question was which board to follow. After a bit of research, I got to know that CBSE is most popular board in India and therefore I decided to develop Vedic Math books for CBSE curriculum. Finally, I had a choice of developing books from class I and I decided to develop books for secondary school first. I first published a book for class 8 and received very good response. Therefore, we released 2nd edition of ‘Vedic Math for 8th Class’. Now I am pleased to release Vedic and Creative Math for 7th Class.
The structure of this book and sequence of CBSE syllabus is not the same and it is intentional. The book is divided into three sections. Section I is to learn basic principles, section II is for application of principles and section III covers Creative Geometry. Section I is mostly to explain the methods and it is important to refer section II to confirm that concepts are understood and ability to apply concepts is developed in pupils. Section III mainly uses Creative Math to explain concepts of geometry. It is fun to learn geometry in this manner rather than conventional method.
I have repeated some of the chapters from my book ‘Vedic Math for 8th Class’ here and this is because your learning of next year gets covered 1 year sooner! Additionally, concepts of Vedic Math are easily expandable and it’s easy to cover the whole concept rather than just a part of it.
The book is designed in such a way that all required methods from Vedic Math are covered here and the student need not refer to any other book to learn the basics. Additionally, numbers (data) are represented in pictorial format or charts wherever appropriate. This certainly simplifies the learning. Geometry is explained through activities and this makes the learning very simple and easy to retain.
I have explained principles wherever relevant. This shall help the pupil to understand them further and apply them confidently. In the curriculum of 7th class, I have covered Bar numbers. This is a very simple concept which eliminates the need of numbers greater than 5 and simplifies calculations. This is also relevant when you know negative numbers. Additionally, I have also explained patterns in decimal numbers and usage of 9 in the context of decimals. Vedic math treats decimals in a special manner. This offers deeper understanding of decimals as compared to the curriculum. The key focus of this book is Fractions, Decimals and Integers.
Even though I have covered most of the syllabus in this book, it does not cover whole syllabus 100% and this book has many additional things that are not part of the syllabus. At a high level, some of the concepts in solid shapes, symmetry and practical geometry are not covered 100% and the students can learn them quickly based on their learnings from this book.
I am confident that this is fun and joyful journey to all the students and their parents. I wish you all the best for more love towards mathematics in general and Vedic / Creative Math specifically.
