to draw a path to find different animals.  It ended up being educational for both the children and the parents and was more than just coloring.

I tell this story because it reminds me not to limit myself or my students to what other people expect.  It also reminds me that learning can be found in any space, inside or outside of school.  What made our field trip fun was that we were all learning together.  We were all excited to see, in person, these majestic animals that we had been reading about in books.  Parents read descriptions of the animals, the children were able to analyze the animals and their families in person.  They were able to see and feel the connection to something bigger and different than them.  How often do we get to take our children to Africa? To the bottom of the oceans?  To see the craters of the moon?  For some children, these experiences will never be a reality but by taking a trip to one of the amazing museums our city has to offer (and if you are a member of the library, you can get a free pass for you and your child), every child can experience the magic of learning.

Also, trips to the museum don’t have to include worksheets; we used worksheets to record our observations so that we could take them back to school and analyze the data further.  We were able to turn all of that data into graphs!  Even if you don’t have the time to make worksheets, bring some paper and pencils.  Let you child draw what they see, write down questions they have so that you can research it later at home, introduce them to math words, like bigger, smaller, compare, size, etc.  Remember, math is all around us!

A lot of classrooms use the idea of stores in the dramatic play area because it is such a great way to build literacy and math skills and all kids have been to a type of store whether it is a grocery store, pharmacy or toy store.  Children can make lists of foods, think about prices, begin to learn the importance and the types of money used to buy materials.  Some children can even graduate to doing simple math problems using money.  And all children enjoy collecting money and using a cash register, which is basically a calculator.  Reinforcing these math concepts at home can only strengthen children’s understanding of math, since parents are the child’s first teachers!

Here are some quick and easy tips for how to turn grocery shopping into a fun game.

1. Before going to the store, sit down with your child and make a list.  Give them a pencil or crayon and a piece of paper and let them write their own list.  Number the list, so the children can see the sequence of numbers.  Ask them, ‘what number comes after 1, 2, 3?”  You can also have them sort the items you need, make a list of vegetables, fruit, meat, etc.  Grocery stores are a great lesson on sorting and understanding categorizing items based on an attribute.
2. While making the list have your child guess how much each item will cost.  Do they think it will cost more because of its size? Or because of how much the item weighs.  Then when you get to the store, you can compare their guesses with the actual prices.
3. Have your child help you weigh fruits and vegetables in the produce sections.  Begin to introduce words like: pound, ounce, more than, less than, equal.

4. Print out a shopping checklist and attach it to a clipboard.  Let your youngest child mark off each item as you find it.  Throughout the trip, bring their attention back to how many items you have found and how many items you have left.

5. If it is a store you frequent often, draw a map of the store and give to your child.  Give them directional cues, like, “turn left at the produce aisle.” Or have them fill in the map using developmental spelling or drawing pictures.

6. Give your child $5 and ask them to pick out snacks.  They might need some help adding up totals and limiting themselves to only spending $5, but this is simple addition and subtraction problems without using a worksheet and disguised as fun!  My classroom walked to our local Walgreens and they each had to find an item that cost less than a dollar.  For some, it was a rude awakening that they couldn’t buy the biggest or best item in the store, but in the end everyone walked away with a small treat!

First, you need to play!  Play with cubetto and have fun.  Think about aspects that will be hard for your child or aspects that were difficult for you.  What can you add to the activity that will support this difficulty?  For example, my students had a difficult time envisioning a pathway from point A to point B, so when I saw the child struggling, I would use a piece of string to show them a pathway.  Then, after a few times of doing this, I was able to take the string away.  When they were struggling with understanding left/right, after the robot turned, I made them a compass that they could turn depending on what direction Cubetto was facing.  The first book that comes with Cubetto take you through all of the pieces of it, giving you the vocabulary words to use while introducing it to the child.  And this book doesn’t need to only be used once, this can be a tool to read several times before moving on to the other books, or kept out while using the other books to remind the children of name of each piece.  You could even write down the different pieces names on sentence trips, along with its picture, to keep out while using the other books.  While I was playing with Cubetto, I kept a piece of paper by my side and wrote down the steps of using it, as I went through it, so I wouldn’t forget a key piece.  I kept these notes in the Cubetto to remind myself and for other teachers who might use the toy in the future, as a cheat sheet.  Thinking the process through before you even introduce it to your child is a key step in you and your child’s success.

Secondly, some kids will get this right away and you need to make it harder and harder for them, to challenge them!  This is such a great problem to have.  For my students who breezed through the accompanying stories, I made up my own and made them more difficult.  Then I had the kids make their own maps and challenge other children to make it through their instructions.  I would also have these children explain to their peers how they mapped out a pathway.  Soon, I could just hand over the box to one of these kids and walk away, knowing that I had turned them into teachers and coders!

Cubetto is coding toy that was donated by a staff member at my school.  We got an early version of the toy before it was even on the market!  Our Cubetto came with an interface board, directional buttons, a bag for the buttons, Cubetto (the robot), two floor maps and three books to accompany the maps.  The first book in troduces all the pieces of the toy and gives the basics of how to use each piece; the other two books accompany each map and tell a story that gives the children directions on how to move Cubetto around the map.   The children have to input the directional buttons into the interface board and then press the start button, which then sends Cubetto through the sequence of directions on the map.  The children loved experimenting with movement, directions and patterns.  As an educator, I would highly recommend some sort of toy that teaches children how to code.  I observed a number of benefits to using these toys in the classroom, so much so that I recommended them to all of my friends with children.  Some of the key benefits were:

1. The children had to think abstractly; they couldn’t physically move the robot themselves, but through patience and trial and error, they had to use a system to move the robot.
2. They had to think ahead and make a plan.  They had to first ask themselves, how will I get this robot from point A to point B and think through the steps of these movements?  This is a skill that we need to teach young children, to prepare them for school and any career.
3. They had to learn that to solve the problem they had to fail and not get upset, but use that failure to learn how to make a better plan and get the robot to move more efficiently.  They ended up liking that they failed because then they got to try a new strategy.
4. They worked together without even realizing it or fighting!  They would observe each other solving the problem and then when they would try and get stuck, they would ask for help from a peer.
5. They had to think about directions in a different way (and so did I!). The “right” direction meant one thing when the robot was facing one way and then once the robot turned, “right” changed.  I had to quickly make a printout that said straight, reverse, left and right, so that when kids struggled, they could turn it and it would give them directional clues.
6. I even learned a lot during this process.  I practiced at home and had to think about how I would teach children in a different way.  Then, when I was with the children I had to figure out strategies to scaffold and change how I explained the process.  It was hard since I was never taught how to use materials like this.
7. This whole process taught me a lot about how my students think; it was easy for me to see where they got stuck in the process of planning and moving the robot, which made it easier for me to then think of supplemental activities to strengthen these deficits.