Welcome Math Friends! 

As I write this blog post, the entire state of Illinois is under “shelter in place” orders to minimize the spread of Covid-19. Thank you to our state leaders for doing what is necessary to keep us safe. Thank you to everyone who is out there performing essential duties—from the healthcare workers on the front lines of the pandemic to the store clerks, restaurant employees and municipal workers who are keeping our stores stocked and our families fed and providing essential services in our communities. Thank you to the child care professionals who are caring for the children of these essential workers. Thank you all so very much for taking care of our families and our community!  

Now, take a deep breath and come join me over here in “Math Land.” In this time of uncertainty, let’s all step back, slow down and focus on building a strong foundation of math through hands-on learning.

With many children sheltering in place at home and fewer children attending our early childhood programs, this is an ideal time for deep learning. This is your chance to keep it simple—without the worksheets and the screens and the busy daily routines.

If you are a parent, I urge you to read this blog and then explore this website for a wealth of enriching early math activities. Then turn off the screens! Break out a deck of cards, a pair of dice, a board game or a puzzle. You can’t mess this up. Just relax and play with your child or children!

If you are an early childcare educator, take advantage of this rare opportunity to pause, relax and reboot. With many child care centers shut down, the world is beginning to recognize how valuable our work is—and how difficult and demanding it can be. Meanwhile, we have the gift of time to return to what we know works best—hands-on play—and to reimagine our math curriculum. Now is a great time to take a hike, clear your head and let your creative juices flow. 

After soothing your soul in the great outdoors, join us as we return to our early education roots. If we must shelter in place, we may as well head into the kitchen and whip up some comfort food while fostering the development of early math skills!

Cooking gives preschoolers a strong foundation in science, math, language, art and even reading. When we invite children to create in the kitchen, we provide learning opportunities in many academic subjects.  Think of your ingredients as subsets that will introduce opportunities for counting, adding, measuring, dividing and estimating. As children see how certain ingredients combine, react and change as they cook, they are learning basic chemistry. Baking also brings your children together at the table to share food, conversation, observations, ideas and camaraderie.

Before calling your preschoolers into your workspace, prep the area! Gather all of your ingredients and take care of the prep work that may be too difficult for the children in your care. For instance, you may need to chop or measure beforehand and then set those items out in the order that you will need them for the recipe.

When I have more ingredients than children (or more children than ingredients), I get creative. When I’m working with a younger group, I crack the eggs for the children and put them in the measuring cup. You may need to let each child add one egg or one child add three eggs, depending on how many cooks you have in the kitchen. Because you know that everyone needs a turn to do something!

Count the ingredients. Count the eggs. Count the number of stirs that each child gets. Meanwhile, expand the vocabulary of your young chefs! Ask the children to describe what they see, taste and feel. Talk about the colors and textures. Years ago, we had a visual learner who described pouring the dirt (brown sugar) on top of the snow (flour) and then stirring in the sunshine (eggs). For years, we asked the children to repeat that same story over and over to new children in the classroom. I have no idea how much joy that silly little narrative brought to our four-year-olds!

Waiting for muffins to bake can seem like an eternity when you are three. Don’t torture yourself or your students! Pick a recipe with minimal ingredients and shorter baking times. Instead of a 30-minute banana-bread recipe, make a smoothie, muffins or cookies. We use our baking time to take bathroom breaks, sweep the floor, wash the dishes, wash our hands and set the table so that we can feast on our masterpiece. If there’s still time left on the timer, then we wash our hands again! 

Remember to keep it light and keep it fun. Now that life is a bit slower, sit down and enjoy the conversations and the joy of being with your child or your young learners. You’ve got this, friends. While we wait out the coronavirus, breathe and bake and give thanks for the time and space to engage in these extended activities, feast on some comfort food and engage in some delicious early math learning!

Bringing children into the kitchen is a magical way to combine process art with self-expression and introduce mathematical thinking.  When cooking activities are well organized, children will enjoy directing their own learning.  Allow plenty of time for wonder and excitement.  Helping children learn the process of cooking through meaningful conversation helps them learn more about their experiences.  Because cooking requires periods of one child doing a task while others watch, keeping the conversation going helps to alleviate the frustration when waiting and taking turns.  With a little preparation and thoughtfulness, children will be involved in the full experience of culinary art.  By working together, children can make delicious meals that not only nourish others but also create excitement about their role in the process. 

Cooking is a great opportunity to use a variety of mathematical vocabulary.  Words like more, less, add, subtract, and the concept of time are all prevalent in the kitchen.  Creating recipes requires print recognition, counting, measuring, estimating, learning patience, and developing language skills.  Doubling recipes involves multiplication, measuring requires fractions, and eating cookies is subtraction at work.  Younger children can pour ingredients in the bowl, help stir, rinse dishes, or scrub vegetables.  Older children can calculate, measure, crack eggs, or monitor the timer.  What can be more fun for everyone than counting out the chocolate chips?  Games can be created by having children estimate to see who comes up with the correct answer.  Building mathematical skills through cooking not only gives children confidence in their developing math skills but it also encourages them to work with others in a creative process.

One young chef in my program has been cooking at home since he was able to stand on a stool at his mom’s kitchen counter.  It was difficult for him to hide his enthusiasm as he shared his mashing and mixing skills with his friends.  He was able to recall memories of his family cooking experiences just through our activity at school.  Other children are just being introduced to the variety of ways math is used in the kitchen.  The excitement builds as children’s interest increases, new concepts are learned, and experiences are shared.  Cooking together can be a meaningful way to strengthen relationships, learn mathematical vocabulary, and understand the value of math in creative activities. Children learn how math is necessary in the kitchen while experiencing the exciting outcome of edible art.

As we scaffold children’s experiences from their prior knowledge, we learn what they can do and then find appropriate kitchen tasks to challenge them.  As educators, we never know how a child’s learning experience will inspire and impact their lives in later years.  Perhaps we are making cookies today with the future executive chefs of tomorrow.

Instead, young children are ready to learn one-to-one correspondence, sorting, sequencing, number, counting, and shapes. Much simpler, right? However, these skills can still seem challenging for parents to support in their child’s development. Are workbooks, worksheets, computer programs or apps the best to practice these skills? How can we know that our children are “ready for school” when it comes to math?

Math skills can be practiced each and every day at home or at school. First, include your child in everyday tasks, even those you would not think they can do well.  Tasks such as laundry, cleaning, cooking, maintenance, shopping and caring for pets can be turned into math practice! Here are some suggestions for including your child in every day math practice.

• Laundry: Sorting laundry by type, family member and size. Match and count the pairs of socks. Fold clothing in half and half again. Measure detergent with child sized cups.
• Cleaning: Using child sized spray bottles, clean the table by counting squirts before wiping it down. Sweep the floor in a circle or square shape. Use sponges cut into different shapes to clean different items.  Categorize dishes and wash by category, such as round plates, square plates, round bowls and mugs, etc.  Create a pattern by washing first a plate, then a cup then a bowl and repeating until dishes are clean.
• Cooking: Whenever possible, include children in the cooking and food preparation. Use plastic measuring cups to measure ingredients and a wooden spoon to stir. Use a butter knife to cut vegetables into small or large chunks. Estimate how long it will take to cook or bake and then discuss the reality versus guess.
• Grocery Shopping: Create a list children can check off to practice one-to-one correspondence. Sort the cart by type of items, such as those in boxes or not, cold or room temperature, etc. Count items in the cart. Pack unbreakable groceries in paper bags trying to fit them in safely without crushing them. Weigh bulk foods, adding and subtracting amounts to get to one pound.
• Routines: For the morning routine, use a picture chart to put the steps to getting ready in order for children to follow. For bedtime routine, use a timer or a picture clock to show the amount of time rather than the actual time. Read books including numbers, counting, sorting and classifying. Use a picture schedule showing a picture of each main activity during a stay at home day so children can follow the schedule and manipulate when things change.

Remembering that math skills for little ones is more than just algebra will make a big difference in how you perceive math as a parent. Have fun with mathematics and go beyond just helping children memorize numbers in order. Look to everyday tasks you may find tedious for opportunities to include learning moments.  It is easier than you may think and way more fun!

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.

My favorite chef who also writes cookbooks for children is Molly Katzen.  She is known for her vegetarian cooking and her wonderful books about food and eating well.  I originally got to know her work because I was given one of her children’s cookbooks when Noah was born.  That book got a lot of use in our house.  The pages are now all stuck together, splattered with yucky, unidentifiable substances, and covered with the kids’ scribbles and drawings.  That book reminds me of what cooking with young children looks like – it is messy, wonderful fun.

Molly Katzen’s website has a page specifically dedicated to her children’s cookbooks.  If you scroll down, you can see what the recipes inside look like.  Each recipe is broken down into easy-to-interpret steps that can be understood by even the youngest children.

Take a look!