Whole Child Development
It’s Teacher Appreciation Day! In the middle of putting together notes and treats for my kids’ teachers, I’ve also been invited by friend, Allison of No Time for Flash Cards to write a thank you note to one of my own teachers. What a treat to thank one of the many amazing teachers in my life!
Dear Mr. Blanchard,
Horton Hears a Who is a Dr. Seuss classic, with revived interest from the younger generation thanks to Hollywood. This story is a great tale of the commitment and unselfishness of Horton, and the importance of cooperation and individual contribution from the Who’s.
I am a passionate believer in play as the best method for teaching young children. And sometimes, the kids teach me a little something through play as well!
Part of a play-based learning philosophy is having materials that will invite the child to play with concepts and ideas. So, being the nut for play and learning that I am, I have shelves and drawers and pockets full of these kinds of materials. A simple material that’s been getting some increased attention from my kids lately is a container full of dice.
First off — Congratulations to Lora who was randomly selected for the Playful Learning Spaces Giveaway! You’ll be contacted shortly, Lora. And for the rest of you, there’s still time to sign up for Mariah’s inspiring course.
Numbers can be a pretty abstract concept for a preschooler to wrap her mind around. But just as a storybook turns abstract letters into a meaningful story, the abstract concepts of numeracy, patterning, and comparison find real meaning in the objects they represent. Putting these real objects into the small hands of young children makes the abstract concrete as we connect these math terms and concepts with experiences and understandings they’ve been building over a lifetime.
Numbers can be a pretty abstract concept for a preschooler to wrap her mind around. But just as a storybook turns abstract letters into a meaningful story, the abstract concepts of numeracy, patterning, and comparison find real meaning in the objects they represent. Putting these real objects into the small hands of young children makes the abstract concrete as we connect these math terms and concepts with experiences and understandings they’ve been building over a lifetime.
I’m trying something new this year, in an attempt to combine a little bit of a show-and-tell opportunity and a numeracy activity. I’m calling my experiment “The Number Bag”. You might want to try it out too, and let me know how it works for you!
My magical, mystical number bag is simply a cloth drawstring bag. The bag is sent home with a card with a number written on it (1-5 for starters), along with the activity instructions in case any parents need a reminder. The child can bring anything they want in that quantity. For example, for the number 3 they may want to bring three toy cars or three cool rocks. (I will let parents know that if their child has something really special they want to share, they are welcome to use some creativity to make it work for the number bag. For example, if the child has a new doll she wants to share, but has the number 3, you might put in three dresses the doll might wear, or a dress with three buttons, and then include the doll to share as well. Or send the doll along with two other dolls of some kind.)
I’m trying something new this year, in an attempt to combine a little bit of a show-and-tell opportunity and a numeracy activity. I’m calling my experiment “The Number Bag”. You might want to try it out too, and let me know how it works for you!
My magical, mystical number bag is simply a cloth drawstring bag. The bag is sent home with a card with a number written on it (1-5 for starters), along with the activity instructions in case any parents need a reminder. The child can bring anything they want in that quantity. For example, for the number 3 they may want to bring three toy cars or three cool rocks. (I will let parents know that if their child has something really special they want to share, they are welcome to use some creativity to make it work for the number bag. For example, if the child has a new doll she wants to share, but has the number 3, you might put in three dresses the doll might wear, or a dress with three buttons, and then include the doll to share as well. Or send the doll along with two other dolls of some kind.)
When you think of graphing, you probably think back to stale worksheets in your third grade class, or to more complicated parabolas in high school calculus. Graphing starts out as a very simple concept, one that can and should be explored with preschool children, particularly the four year-olds. One of my favorite ways to do that is with a Post-it graph.
The easiest way to start with the concept of graphing is to chart the number of boys vs number of girls in a group. It is a clear-cut dichotomy (in preschool anyway :)) . Start by having the children look around. Do they think there are more boys or more girls? In a larger group, this is often harder to do just by looking. We need to organize the information to make it easier to compare. Show your prepared chart, with a grid divided between boys and girls. Explain to the children that you will be using this grid to graph how many boys and how many girls are in your class. Ask each of the girls, one by one, to come up, get a Post-it and place it on the chart above the “Girls” label. Remind them that each person only gets one sticker, and that when we build a graph, we climb up the chart like a ladder: one sticker per square. Next, invite the boys to do the same thing.
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