My first thought about this article came from number reversals (Numbers written backwards).  See the picture to the left.  This picture comes from an assignment my kindergartner completed recently.  Reversals are really difficult for him,  however, he is wholly unaffected, unaware of them at this point.  He loves to write numbers and letters and more than 50% are reversed.  Yet, he feels good, and confident, about his letter and number writing.  So, how do we critique, re-teach and/or fix mistakes in Math without frustrating or hurting our child’s confidence?

My son completed this assignment on his own, I was not with him.   Later, I looked at the page and saw all of the reversals and wanted to work with him post-homework.  However, the thought occurred to me, “How much should I touch on a piece of work that he felt very good about and that felt complete to him?”

In this case, I touched on it very little.  Instead, I commented on the wonderful job he did with many other numbers and I made a mental note that, moving forward, I would approach number situations with a visual in front of him so he can see what direction the numbers travel as he attempts to write them on his own.

I chose to embrace his confidence over nit picking one small assignment.  This is, in fact, much different than a slightly older child who has an assignment requiring correct answers. Would we allow our child to hand in a Math paper with answers all incorrect?  This often sparks debate.  I know some parents who would want the teacher to see that the concept is not being understood by the child and leave the answers incorrect.  I know others that would prefer to sit with the child and talk the concept through with them and then hand in the homework with the mistakes so the teacher could see the issues.  Still other parents might go over the concept and fix the homework.

There is no correct answer here.  Your familiarity with the concept may drive the amount you get involved.  I hear many parents say that today’s Math is “different” and that is true. There are new methods and strategies being used that were not taught when we were in school.  This alone makes assisting with Math at home difficult.  When we do sit down with our child, how much should we help?  How much do we nitpick and when do we praise what is right and leave some of what is slightly off in an effort to boost confidence?

To help or not to help?

In my profession, working with children that struggle, I often hear from parents how stressful it is trying to help with homework.  Every night becomes a power struggle.  Knowing this, having a child work on additional foundational skills, when not required, could be torture for all involved.  So, how much do we interfere?

Different children require different amounts of intervention.

Those with more than one child at home can attest that each child has very different learning modalities.  Therefore, it goes without saying that teachers, sometimes working with 30+ students, have quite a challenge on their hands. Knowing this, it’s important to remember that children approach learning and homework in very different ways.   If we decide to assist, we must be thoughtful and flexible as we may need to make changes to meet individual needs.

The question then becomes HOW? How do we do this? How do we take away the struggle and leave the child feeling confident and secure in the concept?  The first important task is to make sure you understand the concept the child is learning.  If it is a new method that was not taught when you were young, seek out the teacher, watch the worksheets that come home, investigate the child’s mathematical computer program (if there is one), search Google, and educate yourself.  Then, when you sit with your child, you won’t both be struggling for comprehension.  Next, seek your child out the right way.  Try to find an optimal, quiet time for homework, when they are ready to learn,  Sit with your child and go through the each of the steps.  Approaching the situation confidently, and “in the know”, is the best beginning.

If all goes well and your child gets it, step away for the day triumphant. If it’s a disaster and your child is still struggling, try a new approach or don’t be afraid to write a little note to the teacher.  Sometimes they can assist before or after school.  And they might be open to you going as well to watch and learn.

This is my same child’s numbers two weeks later.  Again, It is a paper he completed at school.  Does he still have reversals?  Yes, he does.  I am not making him fix each one, but rather noting them and keeping them on my radar.  When the moment is right, we’ll sit together and practice some different approaches to number formations.

To me, this is a healthy way to look at children as learners.  We all have individual learning styles and needs.  And at different times.  Right now, my son feels fantastic about his learning and he should.  And I want to keep it that way while at the same time guiding him correctly.

Keep positive, support without criticism and, when intervention is necessary, educate yourself so you can be the best advocate possible for your child.

At Harry S Truman College, where I serve as coordinator and adjunct faculty in the Child Development Department, we recently had the opportunity to create Early Childhood Education lab spaces. The most unique of our labs is the ECE Tinkering Lab. T lab serves as part woodshop, part methods lab, and part technology lab and is used to support early childhood educators to deepen and fine tune their practice.

Some of the tools available to students in the tinkering lab.

Much like a good early childhood environment, the lab is not focused on getting anything in particular done. It is set up to be safe, inviting, playful, and to support early childhood professionals to have meaningful experiences during which they learn by doing. You can try, fail, and try again and then reflect upon your process. A lot of our courses use the tinkering lab, but it is very often used by our Science and Math for Young Children and our professional development workshops. In retrospect, it seems so obvious that if hands on learning works for children than it must also work for adults, but even as someone who helped planned the Tinkering Lab and many of it’s activities, I am constantly surprised by the magical, early childhood style learning that takes place in it. My students literally create and learn  things that I could not have imagined when I was planning my lessons.

It reminds me of the way in which young children construct knowledge. You cannot tell a child the laws of gravity, but you can watch them as they drop an object over and over again working like a scientist; making hypothesis, testing them, taking data, and coming to conclusions. This is also the case for math. Children learn math by interacting with it in meaningful, playful, everyday experiences; not through abstract lessons and memorization.

It can be hard to think about how a three year old might experience math as an everyday part of their play. I like to think of math as a language with which we make sense of our world and communicate ideas to others. Tinkering, or just messing about with things to see how they work, is an engaging way to integrate playful math into the classroom. It also relates to some of my favorite concepts of Mitch Resnick’s (Author of Lifelong Kindergarten) : low floors/high ceilings and hard fun. Tinkering is a low floor/high ceiling activity because while there is no limit to how simple the activity can be made, there is also no limit to how complex it can be either. Tinkering also embodies “hard fun” the idea that we learn best, work hardest, and enjoy ourselves most when we are being challenged doing something we are truly passionate about.

A professional development participant struggles with what to do next on her project.

Think about a class that wonders what is inside their broken toy? Why doesn’t it work? Can we fix it? If you let them take the toy apart they learn about geometry and shape, they will likely organically begin to sort and classify the pieces, they will learn about number as they find there are multiples  of the same piece inside, and they will learn about size as they try to find the right screwdriver for each screw. Even better if you and the children don’t know what will be inside. This is where that  learning magic happens; you couldn’t have anticipated the result.

After predicting what might be inside, students take apart a broken laptop.

Another of my favorite tinkering activities that brings hands on experiences to math is a build your own marble run. A cheap and easy way to do this is to get pegboard from a local hardware store and then cut wood cooking skewers down into small pieces. You can give the children recycled materials, pvc pipe, paper, and other found materials to build the marble run and let them balance it on the dowels, tape it, or clip it together with clothespins.

Alumni, faculty, and their children worked together to build this marble run.

This particular activity is one of my favorites because the math: angles, geometry, calculations of speed and distance, etc., is embedded in the fun, children get very excited by watching the marbles. It is also very frustrating. Letting children sit with this tolerable frustration of tinkering with something that doesn’t work exactly as they would like builds not only the content knowledge, but also the self regulation and motivation skills that young children need opportunities to practice. I like to give older children (and adults) a specific challenge.  I might ask them to make the marble go very, fast or make a noise. I also like to have the children work in pairs or small groups. There is nothing that builds friendships and relationship skills better than getting through a frustrating project together and being proud of the outcome.

To me this is the hardest part of the instruction, trusting yourself and that you have set the learners up with the confidence, prerequisite skills, materials and environment that they need and then really stepping back and letting them learn. Really let them get stuck and figure something out on their own. This is why I often plan learning activities to which I don’t know the correct answer, because then I can’t spoil the learning for anyone else by just telling them what to do. The other difficult thing about this type of teaching is that it requires a lot of planning. You have to know your learners, know yourself, and constantly be on the lookout for that just right experience that is going to give a child the opportunity to craft knowledge for themselves at the exact moment when they need it.

That’s just what I would hope for early learners future success with math as well. That the skill that they needed to solve a problem would be there for them in the exact moment that they really need it.

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?

In order to seize the “teachable moment” we need to be prepared.  If a child runs up to you with an earthworm she has dug up and she wants to measure it, it’s never going to happen if you have to go back inside the building to find a tape measure or ruler.  Although we can’t be prepared for every hypothetical math opportunity, we can maximize our chances by creating this math kit, and adding to it, as needed.

First, find a small to medium-sized backpack.  It doesn’t have to be pretty or new.  Pull one out of the old lost and found bin and use that. Label it in some way, so it is clear that it goes outside with the group and that it is for math (and science) opportunities.

Now, fill it with supplies.  This is a short list of the items I would choose, but if you have additional ideas, please put them in the comments section.

2 small tape measure

2 small rulers (or full-sized rulers)

a small bucket balance

several small, lined notebooks

pencils 

a camera (if you dot have a spare that can be left in the bag, be sure to bring a phone with a camera, or the classroom camera.)

markers

 

small thermometer (This is an analog thermometer.  You may want a digital one.)

 

 

 

 

small field guide to birds (I like this edition.  It is designed for young bird watchers and costs $4.95)

and a small field guide to insects and spiders

Here are some ideas of how to use the Math Kit with the children.

Before bringing it outside, introduce the kit to the children during group time.  Take out each of the items and let the children explore them by passing them around the group.  Allow them to ask questions.  Once you gather the supplies back together, explain that the bag will be accompanying the group outside and the children can use them whenever they want.  You can then go through each item, one by one, and provide concrete examples for how they might be used.  Ask the children for their ideas as they will probably think of things that you never even considered.

I would imagine that depending on where you live, there are ample opportunities to look for birds and bugs in the great outdoors.  Even if you have a small outdoor space, there are probably places to dig and explore.  You probably have a few children who Howard Gardner would categorize as having a Naturalistic Intelligence.  People who are nature smart, have a strong affinity for the outdoors and are very interested in human and animal behaviors.  These children may know where to find bugs even when you don’t.  You can support these observations by using the field guide books to help in identifying the species and the names.  Encourage the children to draw pictures of what they find, take pictures of the bugs or birds, and then help the children think of ways to document their experiences.  Keeping records of their discoveries is a great way to encourage early math skills. Have the children keep count of how many they have found using tally marks, and then how many of each species.  That way they need to think of sets and subsets.  They can sort their categories by attributes (brown birds, red birds, small birds, big birds).  This will also encourage them to categorize their discoveries as they look for similarities and differences.

Use the outdoor thermometer to chart the temperature.  Begin using the thermometer simply.  Have the children look at the gauge and show them how to read the temperature.  Older children will have an easier time with this.  For younger children, you can use permanent markers to show where the “hot,” “warm,” “cool,” and “cold” ranges are.  That way, if they can’t yet read the thermometer, they can tell the range of the temperature.  Keep a daily record of the temperature in one to the little notebooks.

Use the tape measures and the rulers to measure all sorts of outdoor stuff.  Encourage the children to use these tools whenever an opportunity arises.  You may have to remind them that you have these tools in the math backpack and suggest some measurement ideas from time to time.  It might be fun to bring out a longer tape measure and try to measure things like how high the children swing, or how far they can jump. Make accurate records of these measurements in the notebooks and help the children compare the numbers.  Who jumped the furthest?  Who swung the highest?

What other ideas do you have for your Outdoor Math Kit?  Send them along!  See you on the playground.

At all ages, children classify intuitively to make sense of their world that seems largely out of their control. By 2 weeks of age, infants distinguish between objects they suck and those they do not. By 2 years, toddlers form sets with objects that are similar. In preschool, children begin to sort objects according to a given attribute and form categories. Many parents have likely walked into a room to see their four-year old putting their blocks or other toys in piles based on color or type. So why sorting is important you may ask. By sorting the objects around them, children start using their analytical thinking skills that is the lifeblood of mathematics. Studies have even been shown that by comparing objects to one another and understanding the relationship between set of objects, children engage in transitive thinking: A blue block is bigger than a red block and smaller than a yellow block. So, blue blocks need to go into a medium-sized block pile. Practicing sorting skills also provide children with models for organizing things in the real world, such as putting toys into the right toys boxes or putting the socks in a sock drawer and underwear in the underwear drawer.

Sorting Ideas

Helping children recognize math in the real world and finding everyday math activities at home is a great way for parents to reinforce young children’s sorting skills. Here are some of the sorting ideas you can implement in our home:

* Collect real-life objects such as rocks, marker caps, marbles, and buttons. Ask your children to guess which objects will together and which items will not. Ask the children to sort them according to different attributes such as; color, texture, type and etc.

* When it’s clean up time, ask your child to sort toys by attributes. For example, ask your child “Can you pick up all the toys that are the same color as this?”

* Encourage your children to name groups of things or activities. For example, at the dinner table, talk about attributes. You might say “2 people at this table wear glasses, 4 don’t.” or “3 have curly hair, 3 have straight.”

While you are doing these activities, use words such as “same,” “different,” “math,” “group,” “collection” and “set” as they apply and encourage your child them to use when they are describing their groups and comparing the groups they have created to one another. You may also ask your children questions such as, “Can you figure out what goes together?” “Can you sort these a different way?” “Why do these go together?” “Why do these not go together?” These kinds of open-ended questions will allow you to better understand your child thinking and push your child to be more precise in explaining their mathematical thinking processes.

Different children, different decisions

Children at different development stages are equipped with different mathematical abilities. A younger child will likely require less categories (sorting by two attributes) while an older child often can handle three, four or more. What you use for sorting also depends upon the age and ability of the child, as well as their interests. Some materials may be more challenging to sort for younger children (e.g., visually ambiguous materials) while others too simple and even boring for an older child (e.g., colored unifix cubes). Using real-life objects and situations to provide sorting experiences is always beneficial for all-around learning for all age groups. The bottom line is to know your child’s abilities, interests and to meet them where they are at, so you can just give them the right amount of challenge without underwhelming or overwhelming them.

As she sits on the floor, a three-year old starts stacking blocks with various shapes and sizes. After some experimentation, she realizes that it is hard to build a tower if a block lays on its curvy side.

 

What does this 3-year-old discover about shapes?

From an early age, young children notice different shapes have different characteristics, even if they don’t know their names yet. They realize that some shapes have points while others have none. They also discover some shapes have flat sides while others don’t. Traditionally, we teach children the names of basic two-dimensional shapes: circle, square, triangle and rectangle and assume that being able to name these shapes indicates a higher level of geometrical understanding. Unfortunately, this can be any further from the truth. In reality, young children need your help to focus on attributes of shapes rather than overall appearance. For example, as you build a block tower together, encourage your child to pay attention to defining attributes of the each shape you are using. You might say, “I see you are stacking up the blocks that have flat sides. Look, all of its sides are flat. How is this one (i.e., cube) different that this one (i.e, half circle block)?” As you continue with the activity, encourage your child to use her fingers to trace and feel the shape. Give them a plenty of time to feel the shapes, count the sides and even ask them to find an item in your home to that resembles that shape.

As children manipulate various three-dimensional shapes, they will eventually build deeper understanding geometrical shapes such as flat faces of solid (three-dimensional) shapes are two-dimensional shapes.

There are many ways to encourage and help your child to learn about shapes. Here are some of the games you might play with your children at home:

* Drawing shapes in sand or foam

* Walking around shapes drawn or taped on ground

* Making shapes with bodies

Shapes are all around us and it is easy to play games like these at home, outside and elsewhere. Most importantly, make sure to have fun while doing it.

Young children are motivated to explore mathematical concepts they encounter in their everyday interactions with the world. Through these interactions, they develop a range of informal understanding of numbers including ideas of more or less and one-to-one correspondence. For example, a child as young as two knows if she gets more or less crackers than her friend next to her. She also exhibits her basic understanding of one-to-one correspondence when she insists on getting a cookie because her brother had one and she had none. Such intuitive understandings of number sense may help lay the groundwork for later understandings of numerical equivalence and operations, such as addition and subtraction. While serving as important building blocks, such understanding does not necessarily help young children explicitly examine and interpret their experiences in mathematical forms. So, how do we help young children make connections from these informal knowledge around numbers to a deeper, more concrete understanding of numbers?

Helping children recognize math in the real world and finding everyday math activities at home is a great way for parents to reinforce young children’s developing number sense. For example, when you are setting your table for breakfast, ask your child to join you. You can ask them how many plates do you need to set the table or whether you have enough eggs for everyone or not. While they are taking the plates from the cabinet, encourage them to count. When young children practice counting, they’re also learning one-to-one correspondence. A child that understands one-to-one correspondence knows that 4 plates equals 4 or that 5 eggs equals 5. To help them practice this concept, give your children large groups of objects to count. For example, you are making a strawberry cake for dessert and you only need 10 strawberries. You may ask your child to help you figure out whether you have enough strawberries or not. As they are practicing this skill, children may count some of the strawberries twice and/or skip counting some of them. Therefore, it is important to closely observe your child as she is counting. When she is double-counting some of the strawberries, does she realize what she has done? Does she self-correct? In such instances, resist the temptation of correcting them. Instead, ask her to double-check her answer and give them enough time to check their work and self-correct their mistakes. If she is struggling, provide them with some strategies she can use(e.g., moving strawberries to a different pile as she counts).

Taking this kind of approach not only allows children to see math as fun, but also helps them see numbers as useful tools that they can use to make sense of the world around them. While doing these kinds of activities, the most important thing you can do is to help your child see math is something that makes sense and it is practical and enjoyable. This will help your youngsters to build a strong understanding of math and develop a love of learning math that will last a lifetime.

Traditionally, mathematics education has not been considered developmentally appropriate for young children (Battista, 1999). Math is abstract while young children are deemed to be concrete thinkers, and some cognitive developmental work done in the mid-twentieth century has been used to suggest that young children’s mathematical ideas develop on their own timetable, independent of environmental factors like teaching (Piaget, 1969). Over the past two decades, however, a growing body of literature has indicated that many mathematical competencies, such as sensitivity to set, size, pattern, and quantity are present very early in life (National Research Council [NRC], 2009). Young children have more mathematical knowledge, such as an understanding of number and spatial sense, than was previously believed. For example, research suggests that young children have a basic understanding of one-to-one correspondence even before they can count verbally (e.g., pointing to items in a collection and labeling each with a number) (Mix, 2001). Further, young children also enjoy exploring spatial positions and attributes of geometric shapes by building towers with blocks and cubes and by manipulating various materials, such as puzzles and two- and three-dimensional shapes (Clements, 1999; Clements & Sarama, 2008). They also demonstrate emerging awareness of measurement, when they begin to notice and verbalize similarities and differences in the size, height, weight and length of various objects and materials (Clements & Sarama, 2008). In addition, research also suggests that 3 and 4 years-old children engage in analytical thinking as they collect and sort materials by various attributes (e.g., color, size, and shape) and in algebraic thinking as they copy the patterns they observe in their surroundings and create their own patterns by using pattern blocks and other materials (Epstein, 2003; 2006). In fact, as research points out, most children enter school with a wealth of knowledge in early mathematics and cognitive skills that provide a strong foundation for mathematical learning (Clements & Sarama, 2009; Ginsburg, Lee, & Boyd, 2008; Mix, 2001).

There is also new evidence that achievement in early mathematics has a profound impact on later success. For example, Duncan and Magnuson (2009) examined the mathematics achievement of children who consistently exhibited persistent problems in understanding mathematics in elementary school and analyzed it in comparison to children who had stronger early math abilities. The results of the study revealed that 13% of the children with persistent problems are less likely to graduate from high school and 29% of them are less likely to attend college than those who had stronger early mathematics abilities. In other words, the initial differences in mathematics skills in early years may lead children to remain behind their more knowledgeable peers not only in primary grades but throughout their formal schooling (Geary, Hoard, & Hamson, 1999).

Studies also showed the predictive power of early math skills compared to other academic skills, such as reading. Lerkkanen, Rasku-Puttonen, Aunola and Nurmi (2005) investigated the relationship between mathematical performance and reading comprehension among 114 seven-year-old Finnish-speaking children during the first and second years of primary school. The results suggested that the level of mathematical knowledge children have before schooling is very important because these skills are predictive of their subsequent reading comprehension. In other words, early mathematics skills predict not only later achievement in mathematics but also later reading achievement. Similarly, Duncan and colleagues (2007) conducted a meta-analysis of 6 large-scale longitudinal data sets to examine the relationship between early learning and later school achievement. Of them, two were nationally representative of U.S. children, two were gathered from multi-site studies of U.S. children, and last two focused on children either from Great Britain or Canada. The researchers focused on the relationship between school-entry skills (i.e., reading achievement, math achievement, attention, internalizing behavior problems, social skills, and anti-social behavior) and later math and reading achievement while controlling for children’s preschool cognitive ability, behavior, and other important background characteristics such as, socioeconomic status, mother’s education, family structure and child health. Their meta-analysis revealed that only three of the six sets of school entry skills and behavior are predictive of school achievement: math, reading, and attention. Further, early math skills were consistently a stronger predictor of later achievement compared to reading and attention (Duncan, et. al., 2007). Consistent with the educational attainment analyses (Duncan & Magnuson, 2009), early math achievement was found as the most powerful predictor of later school achievement (Duncan, et. al., 2007).

Even though young children are natural mathematicians (NRC 2009) and capable of developing some complex mathematical ideas (e.g., addition) and strategies (e.g., sorting by multiple attributes to analyze data), it is also true that they do not become skilled in mathematics without adult guided rich and intentional interactions with those foundational math concepts. This month, we are going to focus on three of these foundational math concepts (e.g., number sense, sorting and geometry) and how you can provide your youngsters with rich and engaging math experiences that offer for opportunities and structures for the development of deeper math understandings.

Each morning, my class has a Morning Meeting that consists of a Morning Message, a Greeting, a Share, and an activity. It is a great way to start the day, reinforces our sense of community, and sets the expectations and goals for the day.  These meetings last anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. While I cover many topics during these meetings, my favorite topic is math. I love a Math Morning Meeting!

I have an interactive Morning Message (a message written on chart paper with an area for the kids’ responses) that the children work on during morning arrival and then later talk about during Morning Meeting.  Anything from identifying and giving the monetary value of coins to measuring various line segments with a ruler using both inches and centimeters, we try to either reinforce what we are working on in math or cover a topic that isn’t heavily hit upon in our curriculum. For example, when working on multiplication facts, I will put up problems that are related and share a pattern.

3 x 3 =

3 x 6 =

3 x 12 =

3 x 24 =

I have a problem for each of the children and one that I use as an example.

For Morning Meeting, we sit in a circle and begin with a Greeting. In keeping with our Math topic of the day, we play Match Card Greeting. I give each child a card on which I’ve written part of an equation. For example, one child gets a card that says “3 x 6”; and another student gets one that says “= 18.” The children move around trying to find the match for their card. When the children find their match, they greet each other. A simple “Hello” or “Good morning” is fine. I always keep a big stack of Index cards on hand for games such as this and this greeting can be adapted and/ or modified for almost any concept; addition, subtraction, shape recognition.

After the Greeting and the children are settled back into a circle, we do a Share. Share can be anything. Topic driven, partner share, a prearranged share in which one student shares something they’ve experienced or an object brought in from home.  During a Math Morning Meeting and when we are working on a specific skill, I will announce a topic for an around-the-circle sharing. Since we are working with multiples of “3”, I will refer back to the Morning Message and ask the children what they notice. “I am definitely seeing a pattern with not only the answers but the problems. Who else is noticing what I am noticing?” The children take a minute to think and then I will start to entertain answers. The children get so excited to share what they notice and there are usually so many extensions and directions I can go based on their observations, that I usually have to jot down notes and table some of their observations for another time.

Since we are working on multiples of “3”, we will play an adapted game of “Ruof” called, “eerht” which ends up sounding like “earth.”  Three spelled backwards. The children stand in a circle for this game. The children count off and on every multiple of “3”, they say “eerht”  1, 2, eerht, 4, 5, eerht… If the they say the multiple of three or make some other mistake, they sit down and the count off starts again.  I play this game for every multiple up to 12 and have even played this game using square and prime numbers. The children love it and challenge themselves to see how high they can count.

After the activity, the children sit back down and we end our Morning Meeting with a heads up about what we’ll be working on during math that day, pretty obvious given our Morning Meeting work and ask if there are any questions, comments or concerns.

Math Mornings Meeting are so beneficial and bring so much enthusiasm to the math that is happening in your classrooms. By 9:15 am, we’ve already had a good 20 minutes of math, the children had fun practicing their math facts, and their minds are warmed up and thinking about math for the rest of the day. I highly recommend the book, Doing Math in Morning Meeting, 150 Quick Activities That Connect to Your Curriculum by Andy Dousis, Margaret Wilson, Roxann Kriete. The book contains math-themed ideas for all four Morning Meeting components: greeting, group activity, sharing, and morning message. Have fun!

Click here to see the link to the book below.

Fascinating!  We have always believed that human beings are hard-wired for language from birth and before.  Perhaps, we need to rethink our ideas about baby brains and math.