I am so honored and excited to be the Math at Home blogger for the next year! I love math, and I love watching math happen with children every day. My goal for the next year is to avoid how high and fast our children can rote count. I want to build the deepest, strongest foundation for learning and let the children build their own house of math on that foundation. I hope to give you a collection of pictures from my own program, quick-reading ideas, some great books to find at the library to build on the literacy skills and math understanding and a question to get some dialogue going about math and kids and life. We want to immerse them in math environments without worksheets or set times for math. It will come naturally, through play. I promise to keep it fun and easy.

Let’s start with a quick look at the brain. We know that the right brain develops first. It is really busy building our children’s imagination, creativity and intuition for the first three to four years of life. The left brain starts to kick in developmentally at about the age of seven. It gives us logic, language, literacy, numeracy. The right brain is full of sensory, play, relaxing. I like to think of it as RIGHT BRAIN=RECESS. That left brain over there…whoa, that looks like school/office to me. My own students are in the right-brain zone, age-wise. They are playing with rocks and friends, being creative and using their imaginations while learning how the world works. I really like recess, just like I did when I was five. So let’s stay out here in recess land for as long as we can! It will build the foundation for that school/office side of learning. I promise that play really will get us ready for the left-brain part of life. So, let’s get started!

Collections

Do you have a collector in your midst? That small child who can turn a five-minute walk into a 15-minute treasure-discovering adventure? You know, that child who slows us all down to look at the world below our feet or above our heads?  I love these kids. They make me crazy, wrack my nerves and raise my blood pressure, but they also make me slow down, take a breath, smile and find beauty in the oddest of places. And they make me smile really, really big, when I remind myself that this is the gold treasure chest of math’s foundation.

At the Ginkgo Tree, we are full of collectors!  We collect lots of nature’s loose parts like acorns and buckeyes, feathers and rocks. But we also collect colored gems, bottle caps, keys and other oddities. THIS, my friends, is the rock solid, hands-on, building the foundation of great solid math brain that we look for in early childhood play.

If it attracts their attention, and they touch it, they own it. They own their learning at this moment! Grab a bag, basket or bucket and take a walk and see what speaks to your children. A good pocket is priceless. Keep your phone in your own pocket and give your child the gift of time. What treasures do they find? What captures their attention? Do you need to mentor collecting? Keep your eyes out for heart rocks. We love a good heart rock, and it’s a great pastime when waiting at restaurants or appointments. Hidden in those landscape rocks, there is sure to be a heart rock!

When you return home, dump those treasures out. Before we can begin to count our collections, we need to figure out which are acorns and which are bottle caps. This will come very naturally as a child sorts the acorns into one pile, the bottle caps into another. We can sort into groups, we can arrange by size, color, shape, texture or weight! Remember, back in kindergarten and first grade, these were referred to as sets. Before you could count sets, you needed to separate into sets. If your child hit the jackpot on a particular item, you may wish to give it a special home. Perhaps a small box, a canvas bag, a Ziploc bag or an egg carton. These treasure are chock full of math potential.

Regardless of how high a preschooler can rote count, a child’s sense of what those numbers actually mean develops gradually. We call this “understanding number sense,” and it requires relating numbers to real quantities.

Young children have an inborn sense of more and less. What is fair or equal? Who has more ice cream, acorns or toy cars? They know! Children learn math sense by working with small sets of collections. Math sense refers to relating numbers to real quantities. Slow it down and let’s work on small groups. One to three objects for the wee ones, five objects for our preschoolers. If the grouping of sets leads to counting, try moving each object and giving it a number. Number sense is the ability to understand that the quantity of the set is the last number name given in that set. By making counting hands-on fun, children are learning place value and addition. Take it slow and keep it fun. Children will be exposed to the idea that the same collection can be sorted in different ways. Sets can be flexible. (Ugh oh, I saw your math brain go to sixth-grade math, where sets started getting a bit confusing. Pop out of that left brain! Get back here in recess!) Math is being taught a whole new way. They are removing that obstacle, your left brain might not have learned this new way, so relax and just sort the rocks!  Remember, not all skills come in a certain order. They will come at different times for different children and in different learning styles. It will come. Baby steps. Strong foundation. Let’s stay out for recess and enjoy the ride.

So, that’s it. Collect some treasures and we will meet later in the month and start putting those collections into play. In the meantime, head to your local library, neighborhood bookstore or Amazon and cozy up with your child for some great books on collections!  Amazon is easy, fast and convenient, but we want to keep our book resources alive in our neighborhoods!

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Left-Brain Adult Lounge

I would be absolutely terrified if I knew how many hours my brain has tried to come to terms with my students playing with…bottle caps. Beer caps, specifically. Craft brewers are knocking out some crazy creative bottle caps! They are fabulous for sorting! I DESPISE branding and have removed most of it from our program, so am I branding alcohol preferences to my three-year-olds? Is this early math politically correct?  Am I totally overthinking this? I asked the parents of the students for guidance. They looked completely baffled and said, “I know you have thought this out, and you must have good reason for it!” If they only knew. So, I observed the kids as they separated the caps by features (dogs, colors, whatever popped out at them.) They can’t read. The letters are foreign to them because, remember, that’s left brain and their brain development isn’t there yet! I grew up next to a state park, and I collected bottle caps as a kid. They clinked like coins, they were easy to find, carry in a pocket and sort into categories.

I flip, I flop, I struggle. Somehow, bottle caps always win. And here’s why:

Numbers and Letters!

Sequencing!

I kid you not!  How funny is this?

Same but different!

HELP! What are your thoughts on this topic?  Am I overthinking all of this? Do I justify all the goodness of a bottle cap?  Apologies in advance, if this sends havoc to your brain space on the ethics of early childhood education! Have a great week!

The second step of our project was to represent the building that was sketched and seen on our neighborhood walk. Children used table blocks to represent these buildings. Table blocks were chosen because we thought they would be easy to manipulate and were smaller than unit blocks so they would be able to represent what their vision was on a smaller scale. We encouraged children to talk about their sketch as they were building. When they were done we put the sketch next to their structures and children were able to point out specific details that they included in their sketch such as the number of bricks on the side of the building and the placement of windows, the height of the building with the placement of the windows and the arches located as a feature above the stairs of a building with the number of antennas on top of the roof. We were able to see the beginning of concepts such as quantity, height, the recognizing of other shapes and spatial awareness and we were excited!

We wanted children to keep working with different open-ended materials and have more opportunities to use the neighborhood as a reference so our next step included just that. For the third step of the project, children had the opportunity to go on a neighborhood walk once again, but this time to look at the different types of buildings in the neighborhood. Before going on the walk, the whole class met as a group and we talked about the different types of buildings and what their purpose was in the neighborhood

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We made a list (grocery store, doctor’s office, library, restaurants) and went on a search for these buildings. Once we were outside and the buildings were spotted, children took pictures of them to take inside and discuss further. Once inside, children represented these buildings using Legos. While putting their structure together, children pointed out specific details of their building and were very eager to try to match their structure to the building that they chose.

They were concentrating on the placement of things not just on the outside such as windows or doors, but the inside such as labeling the doctor’s office that was on the second floor of a building while the pharmacy was on the first floor of that same building. They were also labeling things such as the number of windows, concentrating on the size of the building and being aware that a corner building took over two blocks not just one.

That same eagerness to match details from one “source” to the next continued on to the next step. After building with Legos, children sketched the same building in the neighborhood using colored pencils. I was very impressed with the work the children were doing. It was in this step that we started to see the creativity and the keen eye that each child had regarding their drawings and their structures. We started to see self-correction, two drawings of the same thing building but the focus was on completely different things, and even a three dimensionality that was staring to form within the children’s work.

We also noticed the importance of choosing different materials to represent these buildings. Building with Legos was limiting in how the children could represent their building since they can only snap together in specific ways, but once they were able to draw using colored pencils, we saw the details that were omitted or simply not as obvious in the Lego structures.

We were very pleased with how the building project was going and how open the children were to work with the materials that were given to them for these specific activities. In the next blog, there will be a shift from children working with the buildings in a concrete manner to an abstract manner and using materials that will allow this.

The possibility of a building project began by following children’s interests and things they noticed and pointed out during walks around the neighborhood. This included different types of buildings and specific details of these buildings such as the number of windows, stairs, a triangular roof versus a flat roof, arches, etc. Children were then taking this interest to the classroom by talking about these things and comparing their own houses and buildings that they lived in to the buildings that they saw on their walks. This interest in buildings was also represented in their daily play in things such as their journals, play dough, magnatiles, Legos, their block play, and even pretend play when they were pretending to be construction workers and “building a building from scratch” using large hollow blocks.

After discussing this with my teaching team and exploring the possibilities for math learning in this project, we decided to plan a building project using open-ended materials and breaking it down into ten sequential steps where each step was needed in order for the next step to happen. This project would also start with activities that were simple and straight forward and become a little more complex with each step. We knew that it would be a lot of work, but we were excited and committed to work together to make it happen!

The first step in our project was to go on a neighborhood walk with clipboards, card-stock and pencils. Children were invited to sketch a building of their choice and concentrate on a specific detail such as number of windows, stairs, roof, etc.

They had the opportunity to review their sketch with me and talk about the specific details in their sketch. This was a great opportunity me to work one on one with the child and model and encourage math language in their description of their building. We also discussed other possible concepts in their sketch such as quantity (number of windows and stairs), size (height and width), spatial awareness (positional words indicating location, direction and distance). The idea was not to have a perfect drawing, but for the child to be able to describe what they saw and what they drew.

In the next few blogs, I will talk about the rest of the steps of our building project and how the children were able to incorporate math at a basic level and reach a more complex level within their exploration of buildings.

Parents often bring their young children into our professional care because they want better for their child in future. They hope for their child to become more social, better educated, or more prepared for formal schooling. We often see this discussed in terms of which skills we hope children will gain from having been in early education. Most recently, we see reporting on the 21st Century Skills that children will need in upcoming decades to be successful as adults or in the workplace. While I don’t love the idea of thinking of young children in terms of their future employment, I do believe that parents’ desires to know that their children are being supported to develop and grow while in our care is quite valid. No matter which list you look at or what outcomes for children you are hoping to promote, you will almost always see two things: creativity and social skills. I believe that taking creative activities outside and integrating them into playful group interactions is one way to meet those needs. For this last blog in the series, I would like to share some of my favorite ideas for outdoor creative activities.

In my opinion, the three best things about taking creative activities outside are that they can become: Big, Nature Based, and Messy. I’ll share my favorite ideas in these categories.

Big

When you’re outdoors you have so much more space to do big, group projects. One of the simplest things to do is to take your blocks and things that go outside and add some chalk. Children now have the freedom to not only build, but to design a city, a farm, a magical universe around what they are building. All the better if you can leave the chalk and come back to it the next day and let their design grow and grow. Creativity does not always mean working with traditional visual arts like paint; the deep creativity and design thinking that it takes a group of children to plan and build a city is intense and meaningful. This planning and design requires many overlapping early math skills and uses them functionally: spatial relationships, measurements, counting, and much more.

Another outdoor activity that I love, that requires some planning and construction, but can be done fairly cheaply is to make a large, group plexiglass canvas.

Children now must navigate not only the creative experience of imagining something on their own and then expressing it through paint, but they must also interact socially to paint in tandem with other children. Their experience of their creation is quite different as the painting now has two sides and interacts dynamically with changes in light and weather. They can really play with angles, position, and size in way that is not possible on their own piece of paper.

Nature Based

One of my favorite math and creative activities is weaving. It includes fractions, cardinality, spatial relationships and lots more math. It is often a skill that many children come to us already interested in as they have experience with braiding and twisting their hair. It is also quite empowering for children to make a piece of clothing or a toy with their own hands. When I take weaving outside, I like to incorporate natural materials into the weave, using large sticks as the loom. There is something satisfying and soothing about seeing the natural materials as part of the weave. Weaving is also a big and tiring project, so you can lessen the burden by weaving as a group. Children learn to help each other, take turns, and allow others to make choices in these shared weaving activities.

I also love gardening as a math and nature based activity. In many urban communities, schools can get a discount on a shared plot. You can also create rich gardening experiences with buckets, planters, and in reclaimed recycled materials such as barrels, crates, and bathtubs. Children must count and measure where to put the seeds. They must understand the passage of time as they wait for the plants to grow. They build social, caretaking skills as they water, feed, move, and fret over the plants. Caring for plants a group makes you part of a community in which everyone can have a roll, data takers, waters, soil tillers. Even better if they plant things that they can eat to increase their sensory connection to nature.

Messy

My favorite category. I love to do dynamic and mechanical painting. Painting with toy cars and trucks, making machines that paint, creating a painting pendulum, and even painting with squirt guns. So many children are not successful with or do not enjoy creative activities because they feel pressure for their final product to “look right.” Big body movements and wild, messy painting with no end product in mind can be freeing for these children and act as a creative spark that supports them in further creative activities. It also supports the planning and proprioceptive skills they need to be ready for early math concepts and social interactions. Best thing about it? If it gets too messy, get out the hose and then it’s water play time.

My last activity is a favorite and it’s free. Mud! Let kids get messy head to toe. It’s a rich and necessary sensory experience. Children need time to feel different textures, have their shoes off, and not worry about what’s happening to their clothes and hair. We are finding more and more in research that important connections are built in children’s brains during these free, messy, and particularly barefooted activities. If you add dramatic play props; buckets, dolls, trucks/cars, blocks, etc. the children will naturally begin using the mud creatively and socially as part of their natural pretend play. Dumping mud from bucket to bucket also requires measuring and supports thinking that leads to conservation of mass and other important concepts.

I hope throughout this series that I given you some ideas or reminded you of some old favorite ways of using things that we know work for and are important for young children into your professional setting and information to defend the deep math learning that comes with those activities. Children can and will learn math through plan and outdoor experiences when they are given the space, time, and freedom.

“When I think of these experiences and interactions, I wonder why we, as teachers, feel the need to intervene and explain so often.” –Nora Thompson

I love this quote. In it Nora is talking about allowing children the time and space to include children with disabilities in to their classrooms and play spaces, but I think it also serves  as lens through which to examine many of our interactions with young children.

Take a moment and put yourself on a happy, Summer day outdoors in your childhood, sometime before you turned eight. Take a breath and remember the smells, feel the sun warm on your bare skin. Picture what you are doing, where you are, and how you feel. You could have grown up on a rural farm or in a city apartment, but you can likely imagine a day like this.

A question, did you think of an adult? What were they doing? I would imagine that if you saw an adult there, they were playing with you rather than directing your play. Now think about some of the unique math skills you might have learned at this time. What angle does a basketball bounce of the hoop, how high can you swing and where will you land when you jump, how long is an afternoon? You probably cannot remember the exact moment you learned one of these or many other skills, but what I can be almost sure of is that it was not because an adult was teaching it to your directly.

As early childhood professionals, we all know that children need lots of uninterrupted time to play to learn and grow, but sometimes when I am out with my students, watching them interact with young children, I wonder if we have forgotten what this looks like. It’s very simple and very, very hard. We just have to let them be. Really, really leave the children alone, and put yourself in a spot where you can see what’s going on and where the children know where to find you. I routinely tell my adult students that leaving them alone to learn is ABSOLUTELY the hardest part of my job. Because I care, because I find them interesting, because I want to learn too, and because I feel that I should be “busy.” I promise that your children will learn math playing outside, cardinality, subitizing, basic operations, it’s out there. I also know that children must have the time to be in control and to be free.

Here are some things not to do when your children are outdoors for free play.

Ask Questions: I promise, you already do this enough. The next time you are trying to get something done, imagine someone next to you asking questions you both already know the answer to: what is it, what color, what’s it name, what’s it doing? It’s exhausting, stop.

Play with them: I LOVE to play with children, but there is a time and a place for it. You are big, you are powerful, and you have authority. When you enter children’s games you interrupt their ability both to build meaningful social interactions with each other, and to learn to solve conflicts independently. Use grown-up play sparingly.

Make Suggestions: You could put this over here, you could build this like this, try standing here. There’s no right way to play, so why should the teacher’s opinion trump that of the children’s? Give suggestions only when children are legitimately stuck and better yet when they have independently asked for help.

Entertain Them: If the kids are bored and whining to go inside or for you to be the “monster” in a chase game for the millionth time, ignore them. Boredom is a necessary state of being to build reflective thought, creativity, ingenuity, and motivation. Let it happen.

So what can you do? Here are some suggestions with what to do with your time when children are free playing outdoors.

Observe & Document: Really watch them. What can you learn about the children’s development, strengths, needs from how they move, play, and interact? Take pictures and notes on their learning. Write plans for how to expand on ideas they are independently exploring. You can turn a day of whole digging into an curriculum about holes. Where do they come from, who digs them, what’s in them?

Check in with your fellow teachers: This is a great time to have a chat about how you are doing and feeling and what needs to happen next.

Rest: Yes, you have to supervise the children, but other than their actual safety, let your brain and body be quiet for a moment. Feel the sun and wind, breathe.

Take a project outside: Need to get the knots out of the yarn or the rinse a million paint brushes? Bring them outside with you and get it done while the children are playing.

A Math Problem: If you find yourself with a real need to do busy work during outdoor free play try this: calculate how many minutes the children spend each day being told what to do and they amount of time they get to truly choose what they want to do. What’s the ratio?

But what about my director, families, co-teacher who doesn’t believe in free play? Here’s some easy to digest research to back you up.

34 Reasons Why Play Matters

Peter Gray TedTalk: Decline in Play

Anji Play: Self Determined Play as a Fundamental Right

http://lapisdemae.com/7-formas-de-mostrar-as-criancas-sobre-a-criacao-de-deus/

When I teach Truman College’s Science and Math for Young Children course, I have the students break into groups, do research about, and then debate the benefits and risks of children’s interactions with nature and technology. Typically both the students on the nature side and on the tech side begin the debate arguing that theirs is the more important subject to teach young children. Through the process of research and debate, we almost always come to the conclusion that young children need both. I want to share some of my ideas about ways to meaningfully integrate the use of technology into outdoor and nature experiences for young children.

It is also my experience that many parents and early childhood professionals are often afraid of using technology with young children. We are in the midst of a wave of media accusations that technology both delays children’s development; is as addictive as heroin and a panic that our children are not graduating from high school with technological skills that they need for future success. My approach is to think critically about why and with whom the technology is being used and what it might be replacing. Is it being used to support the child or distract them, is it being used to support a relationship, and is it taking the place of something they need for development? I also like to remind people that any object made by humans to make their lives easier is a technology. I love the anecdote that Socrates was against writing because he believed it would prevent people from learning by memorization. See the Erikson TEC Center for reports on the use of media and technology with young children along with other excellent resources.

I love bringing technology and nature together because that is often how technology is used in the real world by engineers, scientists, naturalists, and other professionals. It also allows adults to relax a little about the technology as it is not being used passively or preventing kids from going outside. One of my favorite ideas is to disable the internet and apps on an old, donated phone so that children may use it only for photos and videos. Empower children to document what is interesting to them when they are in nature and to share it with their friends and families. They can make a photo journal or video essay of their experiences outside.

There are also amazing apps that allow you to use the camera on your phone to identify and classify plants and animals. Your phone or tablet becomes a real world research tool that children can use instantly. This is especially enjoyable for children who have a special interest in a particular type of plant, animal, or insect. You can also use technology outside to have your classroom engage in citizen science projects. You can count birds, monitor the stars, and show your children natural images from climates that are both similar to and different than their own. Monkey Bar Collective modifies the idea of GeoCaching to keep children engaged in scavenger hunt activities in zoos, museums, outdoors, and other locations. You can use voice recorder apps to record animal noises, children’s musings, and other outdoor sounds.

It’s also important to remember all of the “low tech” options you have for interacting in nature. Try keeping writing materials outside so that children can keep a nature journal or press their favorite flowers and leaves. Take maps and compasses with you on walks and use them to find your location and get to your destination. Bring clay outside and try to recreate a play structure or sculpt and animal that you see.

I often hear that parents and professionals are worried that if technology is around, children will not interact with each other or play. I believe this is a very valid concern. I think it is important that devices are available only when they are enhancing an experience, and that they are always to be shared, so that using the technology requires a social interaction. I also believe it is important not to use technology as a reward or a punishment, giving it more emotional value than it deserves. The other gentle reminder that I have for adults is to model the behavior that you would like children to use. If you do not want children to use a phone or tablet on the playground as a distraction, than you also may not use them in that way.

Technology can be a powerful tool for increasing interactions with and appreciation of nature when used socially, purposefully, and with moderation.

The essence of STEAM-based learning is integration. While I knew there were certain skills I wanted to teach students the content to teach those skills was wide open. I can still clearly remember the overwhelming feeling I had my first year teaching STEAM — so many options, what to cover. That first year I had students working on iPads way more then I would have liked. They became my crutch. So much so that the next year I challenged myself to limit iPad usage with students to 25% of my teaching time with them. But what to teach when I didn’t have any specific content?

When collaborating with colleagues my first instinct is to listen. Whenever I was able to attend a grade level meeting I just wanted to hear what they were doing. In doing all that listening I was able to find opportunities to assist with an activity that was either something they had always done and struggled with. For example, second grade students in social studies have a unit that looks at the the areas of our city and how our neighborhood has changed over the years. They learn about residential, commercial, industrial, recreational and services available in our city. In math they are doing some measurement and establishing a number line. What was the “Measuring for the Art Show” unit became Measuring for our Cardboard City. Measuring poster board of different sizes that would be the “land plot” students would build on. This project has grown into the main project of the year for students. But it all started with my helping make the connection between the math unit and the building project they had students do.

 Each student builds a building or space for the city. In the culminating activity they arrange their buildings/places to make up the Second Grade Cardboard City. This project connects to a social studies unit, a math unit, art skills and of course, STEAM.

Not only should you listen for things people are struggling with, but also keep an ear out for an idea they have but didn’t know where to start. Our school librarian does this big unit with first grade students that starts as an exploration between fact and opinion. The culminating project in the past was students reading a picture book biography about a famous person or animal. They find three facts and one opinion about the person or animal they read about and did a guessing activity. She wanted students to do something more but couldn’t figure out what. I stumbled upon the idea of turning a water bottle into what we call Biography Bottles. This idea continued with recycling theme (something first grade focuses on throughout the year). After reading their picture book biography students used a reference photo and a wealth of other materials to turn their bottle into a representation of their person or animal.

               Biography Bottles created by first grade students as part of a Library and STEAM project.

Besides listening there are three more tips I suggest in getting classroom teachers, and other school colleagues to join in on the STEAMy fun:

1. Attend any grade level and/or planning meetings you can. Focus on just listening to find those projects or ideas that you can help expand. After you start working on a project remember that collaborative work requires so much communication. Even if you are doing a project that you’ve done before, you never know what ways you might be able to innovate without hearing what else is going on.

1. Invite people to come see what you are doing. As a specialists teacher I’m often teaching solo. It can feel a little like being a salesperson, but if you want people to be involved or excited about what you are doing they need to see what is happening.

1. Give colleagues a chance to play with materials too. At least once a year I host a faculty meeting where I challenge colleagues to one of the design challenges I give to students or a new one that I’m trying to test out.  Just as students love having time in the day to create with their hands in an open-ended, problem-solving way, teachers too appreciate that time.

Good luck! And remember, communication and listening will be your best tools in getting colleagues to collaborate.

It all started with a question.

Our science teacher was discussing her unit on buoyancy. She wanted some help figuring out what other materials students could use to build small boats that would float in small kiddie pools in her classroom. She also just happened to witness a cardboard boat regatta in her hometown on Long Island, NY and had the sliver of an idea—“What if first graders made a boat that would be big enough to float one of them in our school’s pool?”

When she talked to me about this idea we quickly decided it wouldn’t work to put a student in a boat we weren’t sure would float, especially as they are still learning to swim. But how about a teacher? As someone who tends to say yes before fully thinking through things I agreed enthusiastically only to then worry what this actually meant. And so an idea was born.

In social studies, first grade students learn about waste and recycling. Through a variety of activities students develop a deep sense of why it’s so important to reduce our use and recycle. The science teacher already did some activities connected to this study, so it seemed like a natural connection to challenge our students (and ourselves) to building a boat using materials we would normally recycle.

The first year we did this project we had students build the boat using clear packing tape, and milk cartons. We asked families to bring in any cartons they had, which with three classes of students collecting (roughly 60 students) we had more than enough to build our first boat. For our students, the main goal was to challenge them to apply what they had learned about buoyancy and general boat design. For ourselves, the challenge was managing so many student ideas into one final design.

The first ever First Grade Boat created in 2014 using milk cartons, plastic juice bottles and attached with clear packing tapes. Students were able to design different “accessories” to bring their boat to life.

Success! That first year with the help of one last design addition–a trash can at the bottom of the boat to cover any holes–the boat stayed afloat. That was our first attempt at this project four years ago. What started as a idea between colleagues is now a tradition for first grade students.

Going forward we decided to challenge ourselves and students by building not one boat, but three so that each class would have their own boat to design and build. Our students also recognized that as a school the big cardboard boxes that snack came in each week was highly wasteful. And so we added another element to this project–could students figure out a way to make cardboard repel water? Tape to the rescue again.

If you’re considering a large STEAM study in your classroom, consider partnering with a science teacher if you school has one. If not, I found partnering with at least one other teacher to bounce ideas off of and also help manage a larger project is invaluable. Also be prepared to celebrate failures with students. I can’t even begin to tell you how many cardboard boat prototypes just completely sunk as students tried to figure out the best way to wrap the cardboard, and what tape would hold up best. If you show students that failing is part of the process by making a public display of your own failures, you will encourage them to take risks and deepen their own learning.

When I first jumped into a new role at my school as STEAM Integrator and Materials Librarian, the maker movement was in full swing. Makers are those who make, create, adapt and try to innovate in a variety of ways not limited to the more showy tech marvels so often highlighted on the pages of Make Magazine (https://makezine.com).

STEAM is an acronym that stands for science, technology, engineering, art, and math. It’s an evolution and in some cases an alternative to STEM, which doesn’t include art. I am most often asked why STEAM not STEM. For me, the addition of art doesn’t take away from the need or desire to highlight and encourage students to seek out the STEM fields. Rather the addition of art serves as an additional entry point for students who might not be inclined towards STEM topics. Moreover, I often encourage and challenge my students to see the many ways artists use principles of science, engineering, technology, and especially math in the things they create.

Although I don’t have dedicated class time with PreK and kindergarten students I do have time to collaborate with classroom teachers. What I have discovered is that by design most PreK units are innately STEAMy. For example, kindergarten students will be studying the Post Office in Social Studies which will spur the idea of creating a Postal Service for our school. From there dedicating time for students to create stamps, learn how to address envelopes and write letters, build post office boxes and then participate in picking up, sorting and delivering mail is what STEAM is all about.

First and second grade students have dedicated “STEAM” time as a special class once every six days in half groups for a 45-minute period (Note: Our school using a six-day cycle instead of a weekly calendar for classes.) In this class I focus on activities that introduce students to problem-solving in a hands-on way that most often connects to something they are studying in their classroom or in another special like science or art. Over the years we have developed a schoolwide design process that uses the language derived from our very own PreK classrooms: think, plan, do, review.

The Berkeley Carroll Design Process was developing with the goal to use language that would be familiar to students in PreK all the way to 12th grade.

In first grade students are first exposed to this through a problem I pose to them. My daughter loves bananas, so I often carry one with me in case she needs a quick snack. Bananas are great because you don’t need any utensils to eat them, and they are easy to carry because you don’t have to wash before you eat either. But the bad thing about bananas is that the can get bruised and mushy very quickly. From there I tell them about the first time I accidentally mushed a banana in my bag. I challenge them to help figure out a solution to my problem. From there they think about solutions and questions that they need more information about; draft a plan; build a prototype; and finally we test their creations.

First grade students working on their first prototype project. Students first learned about the problem, then brainstormed ideas and created a plan for their prototype. Materials they could use for their prototype include: toilet paper tubes, paper towel tubes, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, plastic cups and paper plates.

STEAM projects in early childhood can be as big as creating a schoolwide postal service to as small as giving students an opportunity to recreate something they learned about. What I have discovered is that the best projects are those that give students enough room to be creative, get messy, and connect to at least one concept they are learning in another subject.

An early childhood science area is usually made up of tools used for exploring materials and collections of materials. Tools such as magnifying glasses, goggles, light tables, mirrors, magnets, specimen viewers,sorting trays, tweezers and thermometers (to name a few) should be made available to children at all times so they can investigate the “collections” you have in your room.  Ideally, the children themselves helped in developing the classroom collections.  For example, during walks around the neighborhood, the children can collect leaves that have fallen to the ground.  At this time of the year, your leaf collection can be pretty spectacular. Unfortunately, this collection needs to be replaced annually. as the leaves will dry out and fall apart.  That process, in and of itself, is a pretty interesting one for children to explore.

It is nice to have a collection of rocks and stones.  Again, these will range in type depending on where you live. Outside of small pebbles (choking hazard) I would encourage the children to collect all sorts of rocks. The wider the selection, the more attributes they will have. Since Chicago is right on Lake Michigan, we also have a never ending supply of shells.  This collection can take years to build, but shells are an awesome found material that can be explored in a variety of ways.

So what does all of this have to do with math?

It is pretty fascinating to observe young children investigate materials and collections in the science area. I like to consider ways that children might use a variety of materials in authentic ways, with enough time and space to allow for deep exploration. It is a natural instinct for them to separate the items, categorize them, look for common traits or characteristics, order them, sort them, and count them.  The more interesting the collection, the more the children will want to spend time with it. Imagine putting out the container of seashells you see above.  There are a lot of shells all crammed in there.  I am not so sure that this is the best way to encourage deep engagement. Try reducing the collection to a smaller variety and then place those on a tray with a magnifying glass.  What do the children do?  How do they approach the materials?  How can you support their explorations while encouraging their instincts to categorize and sort?In the example above, the teacher has put out 4 shells.  They all have a common shape however, the colors and sizes are different.  This seemingly simple set-up encourages logico-mathematical thinking.  Children are faced with a relationship conundrum.  The shells look the same but they are different. It is in their “differences” that the children are able to identify the relationships between them.  One shell is smaller.  One shell has stripes.  They have to think about “same and different.”  They also have to identify their attributes. It reminds me of the Sesame Street song, “One of These Things is Not like the Other” where three items in a collection are similar and one is dissimilar.  Here, three shells are white and one is not.  Three are big and one is not.  In order for children to figure this out, they have to make sense of the relationships between them.

The differences between these shells is much more subtle.  You can hardly see the color change in the fourth shell.  But, if you provide the science tools, like a magnifying glass, the children will see the differences much more clearly. You can lay shells out on the light table as many of them are opaque or partially opaque.  The light will come through the shells in places and allow the children to see details they might not otherwise notice,

When you put out your your leaf collection, help organize the leaves in some fashion so children can approach them with purpose.  Perhaps start with the green leaves.  These are less likely to fall apart as the children handle them, and may be a little bit easier to study.  They will probably still lay flat so it is possible to put them under a microscope.

This is a leaf from a Birch tree.  You can clearly see the cells and the veins running through it. Depending on the quality of your microscope, the children will see some version of this and can make great observations about what they see.  Point out some of the characteristics of the leaves they are looking at.  Are they symmetrical?  If they are, then the children can fold them in half along the center vein and both sides will match up.  If they are asymmetrical, they won’t.

On another day, bring out the leaves that have begun turning colors.  How are these different?  How are they the same?  Be sure to leave a few green ones out for comparison.  Have the children feel the difference between the textures of the leaves as well.  Observe as they use their math skills to organize the collection into categories that make sense to them.

How else can you use the science area to support early math competencies?