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

            When thinking about using a scientific inquiry approach with young children, I often refer back to one of the guiding principles of the Reggio Emilia Approach: “Research represents one of the essential dimensions of life of children and adults, a knowledge building tension that must be recognized and valued.” I love this principle because it reminds me to focus on the fact that children and adults learn about their world in much the same way, and that tension and conflict is part of the learning process.

It might be easy to imagine how to take the idea of research and scientific inquiry outside, in a rural or suburban setting. You could research the amount and types of fish in a local pond, identify the source of the different insect sounds you hear on a hot summer day, or try to find out why the flowers in a field are different colors. As an early childhood teacher educator at City Colleges of Chicago, most of my ECE teachers are teaching in highly urban settings with limited access to outdoor space. I want to share some ideas for taking scientific inquiry outside in these urban spaces.

In my Science and Math for Young Children course, I have my students invent the definition of science. They typically start by naming concepts related to science; animals, experiments, chemistry. As we continue to discuss, they usually independently come up with some kind of statement about questions and answers. The definition from Merriam-Webster is: “knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.” To me this is what makes scientific inquiry such a beautiful match for early childhood; we don’t have to teach or control much, children naturally do it. They are born hardwired to build knowledge, through testing the world, to find general truths and laws about how things work.

When we start to operationalize what scientific inquiry might look like in an urban educational setting with a group of small children, I sometimes see things fall apart. Here are some of the missed opportunities I often see when teachers try to do science with young children.

Science Fairs and Wacky Experiments: I love science fairs and experiments, but sometimes I see teachers do a “Big Day for Science” in which they invite parents or experts to do big, wacky experiments (I’m looking at you baking soda volcano). These are fun and fine as long as they don’t take the place of everyday inquiry and investigations.

Adult-Led Investigations: No more bean sprouts in a Ziploc bag. Unless a group of children comes to you legitimately interested in how bean sprouts grow and what their roots look like, don’t do it. In order to keep children motivated, and to support them to really use the process of inquiry, it must be the children who choose the question and plan how to find the answer themselves. You are but a guide and resource along the way.

Nothing but Biology: Many children love plants and animals, but not all do. There are many amazingly interesting scientific disciplines: astronomy, physics, chemistry, microbiology, neuroscience. Let the children explore the full range of what it means to be a scientist.

So how do we take it outside when we don’t have big, open, natural spaces? First and foremost, children need exposure to the outdoors, whatever that means for your location. Walks around the block or on bike paths, trips to nearby garden centers, playing at a city park or local school basketball court.

Once we get kids outdoors, we have to really, really listen for the questions they have about the world around them, and then help them dig in. How does a fire engine make noise? How does our local baker make the muffins rise? Where does the steam coming out of the manholes come from? How does the spinner at the playground spin? Why does a basketball bounce? Why do worms come out when it rains? It is important to know too, that you do not need to be an expert in all areas of science. You need to be the primary investigator, who can evaluate and reform the question to make it more meaningful, find and vett resources and references, create an experiment, take data, and reflect and iterate.

            I think that you will find that if you begin following your children’s lead and investigate through their interests that doing science becomes not only easier, but leads to deeper and more meaningful learning.

So far, we’ve seen what it takes to prepare an exploration, a graphing progression, and a discussion about what kind of questions can be centered around an exploration. To wrap up our month, I’m going to extrapolate from a specific example to a general framework for explorations.

A General Framework for Explorations

One of the most fundamental aspects of an exploration is the materials the students use. In the graphing exploration, the materials mainly stayed the same, index cards or paper pie slices and tape. Other explorations, however, can be greatly varied based on the material. For example, say I wanted to lead an exploration about how textures impact painting. If I wished to alter the materials, I would change what they used. Maybe one day we would paint on standard paper, then silk to see a smooth texture, and then painting on tree bark to see how that differed. Conversely, we could paint every day with a different substance mixed into the paint (rice, sand, and then flour) to see how the texture of the substance affected their art. Especially with young children, they are very sensitive to changes in the physical materials they use and benefit from these varied exposures. In my experience, these are the easiest pieces of an exploration to change.

A second aspect of an exploration that can be altered is the constraints placed on the students. Constraints, as generally understood, are restrictions on how students can use their materials. This is an overlooked aspect, as teachers generally only restrict the final product students can create or the general amount of time that can be spent on an activity. This is shortsighted, as there are incredibly nuanced and powerful changes that can result from properly applied constraints. In the graphing exploration, the class had constraints based on who they could vote for, how they voted, and the representation of their votes. To continue with the painting and texture example, students could paint with their eyes closed to see how the slick paint felt when spread over the rough paper. While the distinction between materials and constraints may be nebulous at times, it remains a valuable lens through which to view explorations.

The final aspect of an exploration is the focus of the students, which is directly impacted by you the educator. Through your questioning, you help students realize what they should be paying attention to or thinking about in an experience. To be clear, students can and will surprise you by noticing things you never expected, but it is also important to plan an exploration around key questions and vocabulary. For example, in the graphing exploration, I drew students attention to the relationships between the numbers of votes instead of just who had more. In the painting and texture example, the focus would include questions like “How does this feel different than that” and “How did this texture affect your painting”. Focus work would also include highlighting vocabulary that would be useful, like ‘rough’ or ‘smooth’ in the texture example. This questioning and vocabulary should expand as the exploration progresses, encouraging the students to think more deeply or analytically about the process.

Some Examples of the Framework in Action

In general, I have found it best to alter either the products OR the constraints day to day, not both. This allows the students to more easily reflect on a specific change from the prior activity. This is not a hard and fast rule, just a general guideline.

In order to provide a launching off point for future explorations and help explain the three aspects of an exploration, here are couple of examples of explorations and how their aspects can be modified.

Building

-Materials: unit blocks, legos, paper towel tubes, rocks

-Constraints: goal (height, representation of specific object, volume), time limits (15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute), blindfolded, only using one hand

-Focus: “Is it easier to have a wider base or a narrower base?”, “Do you think you’ll be able to build as much in 30 seconds as you did in 1 minute?”, balance, symmetry

Color

-Materials: shading paint (a single color with black and white paint to alter shade), colored paper, stained glass (tissue paper on a light table), magnetiles and flashlights

-Constraints: painting in colored lenses or light, painting in dim light (colors appear washed out and gray), colored shadows

-Focus: “How did you make that color, since I didn’t put out any orange?”, “Why doesn’t this look as red as it did on the white paper?”, shade, blend

Hopefully, with this framework and these examples, you’ll be able to take a great idea and expand it into a full-fledged exploration. After all, there’s nothing wrong with doing something fun!

Welcome back to week 2 of making graphs with kids! Today we explore rolling out an exploration and pushing students to think more deeply about a concept.

Let’s Make Bar Graphs!

Since I knew the class had only limited exposure to bar graphs going into this exploration, we spent the first two weeks working on bar graphs. This blog will explain how I helped the class move from simpler to more complex graphing problems.

We started this exploration back in January, so I knew what my first question should be: did you like your presents or spending time with family? I knew this was a question the class would easily understand, have firm feelings about, and be excited to talk about. This conservatism is a key aspect my exploration philosophy: introduce novelty in small doses. If I am expecting them to do a completely new thing, then the rest of their thinking should be simple enough they can focus on the new piece. If I had asked them to vote on a conceptual topic, like their favorite character across multiple books, they would have been less able to focus on the graph.

The Rubber Meets the Road

When it came to the actual voting, I had several goals for the process. I wanted to make sure the students couldn’t accidentally ‘vote’ multiple times, that they were able to express themselves through their votes, and to create a physical graph that could be seen and examined over time. Therefore, instead of asking the class to raise their hands, each student wrote or drew their vote on an index card. That card was then taped into a blank bar graph grid I created out of masking tape on our board. I also wrote out sentence stems for the class; while few of the students were able to read the stems, some of them decided to copy them into their exploration journals.

The timing of the voting and discussion was also rather important. The question was on the board from the time the students entered the classroom, which lead to big discussions about how people were voting and why. While this may have led to some politicking or vote changing, the point of the exploration was not to find out how they actually felt. Instead, they were learning to predict how people would vote, how that would change the outcome, and even making sure that everyone understood the question at hand. After all, when I hear one student say to another “Student Z hasn’t voted yet but will probably vote here, so we’re going to win”, that is a great sign that the student understands how to read and interpret a graph.

As the week went on, we transitioned from simple questions about their preferences to more complex questions about the novel we were reading, Charlotte’s Web. I also started encouraging the class to have more challenging discussions about the graph, like seeing how many people voted IN ALL, how much did this option win by, and what would have happened if two people had voted differently. These questions pushed the class to see the graph as a living representation, not a static object to be observed.

Ramping Up the Difficulty

In the second week I transitioned to more complex graphs. Instead of choosing between two options, the class had to choose between three or four. I also took away the horizontal guides so they could see how having the votes misaligned made the graph harder to read. Finally, the class switched from vertical bar graphs to horizontal bar graphs. In keeping with that conservatism I mentioned, the questions I posed to the class reverted to easier questions about who won and how many votes each option got until they became comfortable with these variables.

Throughout this entire process, I continually asked myself how these changes would either

help the class read graphs better or give the class a more intuitive understanding of the relationships between numbers. This helped me ensure the questions and graphs were challenging the class and working towards their mastery goals.

This was just the first half of our exploration, check back next week to see how we took it to the next level.

The difference between an activity and an exploration

Exploration based learning may be all the rage, but not every Pinterest post is an exploration. Explorations are intensive, thoughtful investigations into a concept, while an activity is a solitary project, isolated from any surrounding work. In my Pre-K/K classroom, the emphasis is on explorations that take anywhere from a week to a month or more. In this series of posts, I will explore the groundwork I did to prepare for an exploration of graphing, the work we did with graphs for that month, the benefits of this exploration, and wrap up with some guidelines about how this mindset can be extrapolated to inform other explorations.

The seed of most of my math explorations comes from Little Kids – Powerful Problem Solvers by Andrews and Trafton. While I believe this book contains many great ideas, I’ve often felt it did not do enough to provide a full plan and instead simply explored a single activity. Therefore, when I read that our January exploration was going to be centered around graphing, I was certain that there were ways I’d need to expand it.

Laying the groundwork

I knew we’d be working on graphing in January, so I started several months earlier by seeing what the class already knew. They voted for whether the movie or book version of How to Train Your Dragon was better. After the vote, the class made a bar graph based on the votes cast. While they were working and during our discussion, I took careful notes about what prior knowledge the class already had.

Once the graph was completed, I questioned the class to see how well they could analyze the data. The whole class could tell who won and lost, which was reassuring. Most of the class was also able to tell how many people voted for book and how many voted for movie, another encouraging sign of comprehension. Further probing, however, revealed a number of weaknesses. No one was able to determine how many people had voted or how much the movie had won by. This, therefore, provided the baseline for the scope of my exploration.

While it is not necessary to have a full questionnaire before initiating an exploration, it is vital to check what prior knowledge the students have. You will almost certainly not have to cancel an exploration based on what the class already knows, but it is this tailoring that allows students to best grapple with the material later on.

Setting the scope

If you were going to attempt this exploration, it would be critical for you to determine what goals are appropriate in your setting and time frame. Students younger or you have a shorter time frame? Consider emphasizing the recognition of the larger picture of the graph (who won, what were the categories, etc). Students with a more developed mathematical ability? Push them to create graphs in groups or independently and spot errors in a graph based on the data set. Using this as a capstone to previous graphing explorations for advanced students? Have the class compare multiple representations of the same data to determine the ideal format or study misleading statistics.

With this range of goals in mind, I prepared for this exploration by determining what educational skills I wanted for the class to achieve. By the end of the month, I wanted my students to be have two related skills:

-Tell what information a graph is trying to depict.

-Be able to visualize how a set of numbers would look when graphed.

These were the two goals that all the work within this exploration would be working to address. As we move through this month, these goals will be the lens through which all of the activities will be evaluated.

This scalability is not unique to graphing. Many, if not most, topics in mathematics can be easily adjusted up or down. The final post this month will detail how to do this, but rest assured the teaching moves discussed here are generally applicable.

Creating a Sequence

This is one of the trickiest parts of the process: what is the actual work the students are going to do? I’m a worrier, so the trap I find myself falling into is making a timeline: Monday do this and ask this, Tuesday this and that, etc. However, since the goal isn’t me being able to do these activities, it is unwise to make too precise of a timeline. Instead, it is more efficient to make a sequence of topics or activities the class can cover. This way, I have a vision of where we can go and what to prepare, but I’m letting the class determine the pace. For this exploration, I decided to start with bar graphs and move into pictographs in the third week. In addition, it is useful to consider the breadth of questions that can be asked. This vision of exploration preparation will be explored more in the final blog post this month, so check back for a fuller explanation.

Check back next week as the rubber hits the road and we actually start graphing!

Math really is fun.  It can be misery trying to teach it, but magic when you integrate it into your child’s everyday life.  

It’s a mystery to me why some children have a natural affinity for numbers while others show no interest or may even resist them.  It may be no different than why I chose to participate in gymnastics as a child while my best friend’s sport of choice was soccer.  We veer toward subjects and activities that come easily and steer away from those that are confusing or tricky.  As a parent of four young children and a learning specialist, I know how difficult it can be to get a child to participate in something they think is hard or boring. Pushing concepts on young children will prove arduous to both the adult and child, so what are some fun ways parents and educators can engage young children with math?

Too often we turn to the computer for answers, .  Or the apps on a smartphone.  While some of these are fun, my children already spend enough time in front of screens.  There are many workbooks that reinforce math concepts, but if your children are like mine, they aren’t going to be motivated by more ditto sheets.  Instead, I propose thinking more organically about numbers and mathematical concepts; they are hiding within so much of what we do everyday.  Very often, we can explore mathematical language and concepts without it ever seeming to our children that we are “working on math”.  If there are two words that don’t go over well with children, the top two might be “work” and “math”.

Some examples of how to bring math into everyday life:

*Put a timer on the microwave. Tell your child how much time you’ve put on the timer. Challenge them to pick up their toys or clean their room before the timer beeps. If they finish early, do a countdown with them while watching the numbers on the clock. You could even hold up fingers for the 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 countdown.  If it was not enough time, talk about how much MORE time could have been added to the timer.  If it was too much time, how much LESS could have been used.

*Have your child study their cereal box in the morning.  Any aged child loves to look at the colors, the characters, and the games or stories on the back of the box.  But cereal offers many other rich math opportunities:

-Talk about the numbers they see in the ingredients. Discuss which character on the box is “bigger” than another. Take the cereal box apart, cut the pieces and measure them with a ruler or just lay them next to one another and decide which is taller and which is shorter.

-Pull a handful of cereal out and count.  How many “marshmallows” are in the cereal  (if you like the junk cereal variety)? Separate by color. Sort piles of like shapes. The amount of opportunities to get the math brain curious is limitless.

*Near your child’s bed, create a Mathematical bulletin board. My youngest son sleeps on the bottom bunk in a bunk bed. I created a beautiful (not too visual so as to keep him awake) collage of mathematical concepts for him to peek at before he closed his eyes at night.

After we read, I count with him. We find numbers. We look to see which number is “bigger”. We play riddle games. “I’m thinking of a number”. When he is tired, I never force it. When things get old, I switch it up. It is fun because he never knows what is going to be on the board next.

*Is your child physical? Make movement mathematical. How many times can you throw the ball back and forth or roll it if catch proves difficult. Create a dart board (out of plain paper) with numbers on it. Make paper airplanes and see what numbers you can both hit.

Get a jump rope and sing a number song or count. Kick a soccer ball and keep tally marks on a sheet of paper to track how many goals are made by each player.

*Cook and bake with your child. Both offer very rich opportunities to sneak numbers in. There are fraction opportunities but also looking at temperature on an oven. Talking about how long the item needs to cook. How many minutes does the batter need to be mixed? Etc.

*Play games. Dice games, card games, matching games. There are a plethora of board games that include mathematical concepts.

-Sleeping Queens (A family favorite- enjoyed from my 5 year old up through both parents!)

-War: an easy way to compare numbers. You can add and have each player turn over two cards. The bigger number after you’ve added keeps all 4 cards.

-Rat a Tat Cat (Another family favorite that involves your wanting to keep the “low” numbers and get rid of the “high” ones)

-Shut the Box: Roll the dice and close the doors on the numbers you roll. Try to “shut all of the numbers” to end with the lowest number.

-Memory: Who could forget Memory? What a wonderful game. The cards can have shapes on them or numbers. While playing and matching, talk about the shapes they see, count the images on the card together before making matches.  

These ideas are not new and this list is far from complete- there are so many more hidden opportunities to learn math. They are things that many parents are already doing with their children everyday. However, when it is not obvious that Math is being taught, it can be easy to overlook the Math hidden right in front of you. Before you turn on a computer or buy a workbook, try to find the hidden math in your everyday life. To insert mathematical language, concepts and games into their life can make all of the difference. After working in a few more of these ideas, I think you’ll see your child building a math brain from everyday life.

Note: Strategies provided in all four of February’s blog posts can be facilitated in both the home and the classroom, as well as other contexts. 

Young children are often intrigued by the sense of magic that today’s technology seems to possess.  Though there is not magic in the devices, we can harness that intrigue to introduce new and innovative ways to explore mathematics using technology.  ChatterPix, created by Duck Duck Moose (also ChatterKid), is a tablet device application that allows for users to add a mouth animation providing a voice for a character. These animations are saved in the form of a video which can be shared via email, social media, text, etc.  This video shows a quick tutorial for how this application works:

Caption: At this time, ChatterPix is available for iPad and iPhone only.  If you are interested in ChatterPix on other devices, I encourage you to reach out to Duck Duck Moose, they are very responsive to feedback: https://duckduckmoose.zendesk.com/hc/en-us

Price: FREE

As you can see there are endless possibilities for how this application could be used.  As Director of Education Technology at Catherine Cook School in Chicago, I am always amazed by the ideas teachers come up with to support collaboration, creativity, communication, critical thinking, character, and other skill development.  We have used this application in a multitude of ways, such as providing a voice to familiar story book characters. In the consideration of early mathematics, children could use Chatterpix to create their own animated number stories.  Consider this process to help the child(ren) create a plan for their number story video:

1. Identify a character
   1. Will it be the child themselves?
   2. Will it be a favorite book or movie character?
   3. Will it be a brand new character they create?
2. What are the items being added or taken away?
   1. If it’s the child themselves, do they have a favorite toy? Food?
   2. If it’s a favorite book or movie character, what do they know about the character that could give them some ideas?
3. What is the story around the addition or the subtraction?
   1. Is this a true story?
   2. Is this a story made up in the moment?
4. How will the illustration be created?
   1. Pencil? Paint? Sculpture (clay)?
   2. Photograph of actual items and individuals?
   3. An application-based illustration?
5. Who and how would we like to share this video?
   1. Remain on family/school device?
   2. Share with family members or friends?
   3. Post to an eportfolio resource such as Seesaw?

In the example I created below, I decided I wanted to include myself in the video and then tell a simple short story of how I once shared a chocolate chip cookie with my sister which left me with two cookies to enjoy for myself.  Parents and teachers may consider creating their own number story videos to not only provide an example but to also get familiar with the application and discover the fun while enjoying art, technology, and mathematics. The most powerful experiences with technology is when multiple subjects or disciplines come together.

screenshot provided by Brian

Outside of number stories, what other ideas are coming to your mind?

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.

One of the obvious places you could put up a peg board is in your woodworking area.

Rather than having all of your tools all jumbled up in a box under the woodworking table, hang a simple piece of pegboard up over the table and carefully organize your tools so they all fit.  Once you have them in place, lay the entire thing down on the ground and carefully draw an outline around each tool so the children can match the shape and size of the tool with the space where it belongs.  This will keep your tools organized while also asking children to use their math skills to put their materials away.

One of my favorite ways to use peg boards is to hang them up at the children’s eye level and supply the children with a selection of hooks and clips so they can create their own wall project.

Next, put out a box of tubes, yarn, and pegs (the kind you have from your small pegboard collection are perfect). Show the children how the pegboard hooks work.  They may be a little complicated at first, but they will get the hang of it.  Explain how the hooks can be moved around the board to provide anchors for their work.  Provide a few examples of how the hooks can be used with the tubes and the yarn.

This example comes from the hallway at Truman College.  See how the tubes are set up to create a ball run for small balls, like ping pong balls.  The balls move through the tubes and drop down to the next level.  This requires an enormous amount of motor planning and spatial awareness and may take a while for children to create.  Those who are very familiar with marble towers may have a greater understanding of the mechanics behind these kinds of designs. Make sure you also provide buckets or bins to catch the balls when they come to the bottom, otherwise you will have them rolling all over the classroom. Large marbles are another good option.  They move a lot faster than ping pong balls so it might be interesting to encourage children to “race” the balls and experiment with speed.

Notice the addition of the upside down bottle.  The wide bottom allows the balls to drop in and then they come out of the spout and back into the adjoined tube.  They have also added colorful pipe cleaners; a tool that is extremely satisfying to the young child.  They can be bent in any direction and are strong enough to hold stuff together.  Awesome ideas.

Clothespins are another inexpensive and interesting addition you can provide.  They work well when clipped onto the yarn, and if you have the multicolored variety, children can create patterns with them. They can use them to hang things off of their wall project, which sounds easy enough at first, but will require planning and estimating.  Heavy things may slip so the children will have to figure out that they need to use more clips or hangs things that are lighter or smaller. There are so many uses for a board like this but leaving it as open-ended as possible creates a blank canvas on which children can work.

I’d love to hear from you about what you might add to a classroom pegboard?