One extremely cold morning, PLUS one extremely curious three-year-old EQUALED an unexpected explosion of mathematical concepts being explored in our classroom. Jamison started the movement with a small ramp and a single car. The fever caught on and soon we had ramps and obstacles being set up all over the room by Jamison and his fellow early math explorers. We had ourselves a PLAY BUZZ going on! 

What exactly is a play buzz? It was first explained to me as “a moment during free play when all is good, all is right, all needs are being met and all children are learning.” I would love to give credit to the genius teacher who coined the phrase “play buzz.”  It’s a teacher’s dream and, when it happens, you recognize it immediately. These are the moments of movement and learning and exploring and brain-building experiments. These are the moments when you grab your camera and your clipboard and you begin checking off all of the learning standards that those pesky assessments demand.

On this given day, we were exploring the concepts of spatial relationships and geometry. We made predictions, gathered data, studied cause and effect and organized our information to try something new. We were knocking out those Illinois Early Learning Standards by the minute. Math vocabulary was being tossed about in typical preschool language, including the words “up, down, fast, faster, speed, tall, short, in front of, behind, balance, circle, line, flat and corner.” Children need to learn the language of math to think through and solve their math challenges—and then communicate their thought processes to others. When children play and experiment with ramps and cars with their friends, they learn how to problem solve and communicate their thoughts. Problem-solving play helps children develop foundational skills that will be used in math learning in the years to come. When we introduce children to the vocabulary of math, we are building a foundation for future math success. This early math website has a fabulous vocabulary glossary if you’d like to fire up your brain to “hear” the math that is happening in your own classroom during free play.

When these play buzzes happen, the energy in the room will feel calm and focused. This is the perfect time to observe the learning that is underway and document it through photos and/or notes. This is the good, deep learning that connects the synapses in the brain. This is the hands-on learning that builds a strong early math foundation. This is when you start matching up learning standards on assessments with ease and joy! What turns your students on? Observe your students to determine the types of activities that spark a play buzz and then let the learning standards take care of themselves!   

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!

            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.

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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?

Setting up a nurturing mathematical environment & community is an essential beginning to any school year.  When  getting to know my students, I like to dig deeper and find out what kind of learners they are, where their strengths lie, and what areas they intend to work on during the upcoming year.

Teaching 2^nd, 3^rd, and now 4^th grade for the past 20 years, I have seen so many students arrive on the first day of school declaring themselves “Bad at Math.”  When I push them to expand upon that statement, I typically receive, “I just don’t like it” or “I like reading instead” They have already, at the age of 7 or 8 years old, started to shut down in math. For years, I took the approach of cheerleading them through their difficulties, offering extra support, and diversifying the curriculum with “fun” activities such as puzzles, activities that involved food, and various games instead of focusing on giving these children the emotional tools they needed to work through difficult problems.  A couple of years ago, my school hired a math consultant and she introduced us to Habits of Mind and it changed not only my approach to math and all other aspects of my grade curriculum and teaching.

Habits of Mind are essentially 16 characteristics of what students do when they come across a problem where the answer isn’t immediately obvious. So much of our math curriculums have been about focusing on getting the correct answer. Habits of Mind has us also looking at what the children do when they don’t know the answer. “We are interested in enhancing the ways students produce knowledge rather than how they merely reproduce it. We want students to learn how to develop a critical stance with their work: inquiring, editing, thinking flexibly, and learning from another person’s perspective. The critical attribute of intelligent human beings is not only having information but also knowing how to act on it.” Arthur L. Costa, Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind (An amazing book! I highly recommend it!)

I put these Habits of Mind up on the wall of my classroom and keep them there all year long as a reference. I break them up into 3 categories: the actual Habit of Mind, the short and memorable definition, and what it looks like in the classroom. For example, my favorite Habit of Mind is “Flexibility” The short and sweet definition of “Flexibility” is:  Look at it another way.  The way it looks in the classroom is to change your perspectives, think of other ways to solve the problem, listen to other classmates’ options and strategies.

This is a wonderful Habit of Mind for a student who consistently uses the same strategy to solve a problem despite the results. Last year, I had a student who was very determined to always use the subtraction algorithm despite the fact that he wasn’t always correct and that he wasn’t relying on his number sense to solve problems like 100 – 25.  He resisted adapting strategies such as an open-number line or extended notation. After many frustrating and tear inducing experiences with the algorithm, his classmates encouraged him try out the other learned strategies. Coming from his peers and not mandated from his teacher was a key element in his willingness to try another approach. After playing with several strategies during our subtraction unit, he declared that he was much more successful counting up on an open-number line than he had been using the algorithm which then led to a very rich discussion about what strategy to use when and how important it is to have an arsenal of strategies at our disposal. Developing critical thinkers and empowering the children with the tools they need to become successful problem solvers has helped turn those “I don’t like math” children into successful mathematicians. From that moment on, this student’s Habit of Mind was that he needed to work  “flexibility” and when he became stubborn or adamant during a difficult math session, we, our classroom community, only needed to remind him of being flexible and he was able to switch gears and do just that.

One of the beauties of Habits of Mind is that everyone has something they need to work on. That same year, I had what we call a “high-flyer” She was mathematically savvy, great with rote memorization and up until 3rd grade, had gotten away with relying on her mental math abilities to solve problems correctly. She didn’t like to show her work and while the majority of the time, she solved the problem correctly, she wasn’t able to recognize where she went astray if she happened to solve the problem incorrectly. As the problems started to become multi-step and it all became too much to hold in her head, she began to stumble. “Striving for Accuracy and Precision” became her Habit of Mind to work on.  Check it again!  Show your work!  A desire for exactness, using your Math Journal to show your work and be neat & organized in your mathematical thinking is what it looks like in the classroom.

You can easily find Habits of Mind on the Internet along with so many wonderful and creative ways in which teachers implement them.  We were so dedicated to our Habits of Mind last year that our end-of-the year, written by the students play was based on solving a very tough math problem and using our Habits of Mind to do so. We had children act out each Habit of Mind. There was also a great and almighty HOM (acronym for Habits of Mind) who kept the children focused while solving the problem and a teacher who presented the problem and threw additional obstacles in their way such as time constraints, taking away manipulatives, and adding extensions to the problem along the way. It was adorable!

Cooking with kids offers a wonderful array of learning opportunities for young children. It provides practice in language arts (vocabulary and “reading” a recipe), science (chemistry and exploring the senses), and developing social skills (cooperation and turn-taking). The kitchen also provides a range of math practice such as counting, measuring, and understanding order.

In my son’s pre-k class, the teachers and children cooked together almost weekly; the recipes coincided with their Letter Of The Week. So for B week they made banana bread and for O week they made omelets. The recipes were simple enough for the teachers and children (ages 4 to 5-years-old) to manage, each having a minimum number of ingredients. My son LOVED the rice pudding so much that I asked his teacher for the recipe. When I saw how simple it was, I suggested we collect ALL of her recipes and create a cookbook to share with other parents, whom I imagined were equally excited to cook with their kids at home. After all, these were recipes already vetted by our experienced and talented teacher.

As a teacher in the classroom, we sought out parent/caregiver volunteers to assist with cooking projects. Having the child’s special grown-up allowed those participants to engage in the school life of their child, providing them with an opportunity to better know the other children and teachers and also observe their own child in the context of the classroom. It also allowed us to maintain good adult/child ratios while working with small groups of children (typically 4 – 5), in the kitchen. The children who cooked or prepared snack (sometimes it was simply designing bagel faces with cut fruit, vegetables and sprouts) usually delighted in their food and seemed proud to share their creations with their classmates. The learning continued through the service portion of the meal, since the child chefs, with the help of the grown-ups, needed to figure out how to divide what they made into equal portions for their friends. Something like bagel faces required counting and one-to-one correspondence; baking a quiche required cutting it into enough equal-sized pieces to serve everyone.

For recipes that were made frequently, we made recipe booklets that were much more readable for children. Play dough was something we made with children on a weekly basis and for that we created cards, bound by binder rings that had visual instructions and described quantities with pictures.

Cooking presents children with plenty of opportunities to learn and is also a great way to teach principles of good nutrition and encourage an adventurous palate: in my experience kids are much more likely to try foods they’ve grown or prepared themselves.