James bounces into our early childhood center on a gloomy March morning and asks, “Can we make muffins today?” 

“Yes! Muffins!” the other children shout, jumping up and down in what just moments before had been a calm, quiet and sleepy classroom.

We cook a lot, and over the years I have learned to stretch this activity into a “curriculum” that gives each child plenty of hands-on time with the ingredients.

There is something magical about cooking that levels the playing field and makes the activity developmentally appropriate for children of every age and skill level.

Before calling the preschoolers into our kitchen area, I prefer to prep the workspace. But on days like this—when the cooking is a spontaneous, child-led idea—I send the children to the bathroom to wash their hands and quickly get to work.

In an ideal world, I would gather all of the ingredients and take care of any prep work that might be too difficult for little hands in advance. For example, I might chop an ingredient or pour a teaspoon of vanilla into a measuring cup and then set those items out in the order that we will need them for the recipe.

“Can I crack an egg?” begs Saaliha. 

“Me, too!” shouts Marcus. The children are bouncing with energy and joy.

“I don’t like to crack eggs,” says Hudson. “Can I stir the flour and sugar?”

When I have more ingredients than children (or more children than ingredients), I get creative. If I’m working with a younger group, I’ll crack the eggs for the children and put them into measuring cups. You may need to let each child add one egg or one child add three eggs, depending on how many cooks there are and how much time you have in the kitchen.

I try to stretch out this part of the cooking sequence because every child needs a turn, and each turn is a learning opportunity. Cooking is one of those rare times when everyone is working as a team, the children are happy and helpful and the conversations are rich and engaging.

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, children have repeated that same story over and over to the new children in the classroom. I have no idea how many years this has gone on or how much joy that silly little narrative has brought to the children who have walked through our door!

Count the ingredients. Count the eggs. Count the number of times each child gets to stir the mixture.

Meanwhile, expand the vocabulary of your young chefs. Ask the children to describe what they see, taste and smell. Talk about the colors and the textures.

Then ask the children to predict what will happen to the muffins or cookies when they are placed in the oven. Will they rise? Will they get bigger? Why?

Cooking gives preschoolers a strong foundation in math, science,  language, art and 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, observing, predicting, adding, measuring, dividing and estimating.

As children see how certain ingredients combine, react and change during the cooking process, they are learning basic chemistry.

Baking also brings children together at the table to share food, conversation, observations, ideas and camaraderie. What more could you ask for in an early childhood setting?

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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 as soon as it comes out of the oven and cools. If there’s still time left on the timer, then we wash our hands again! 

Remember to keep it light and keep it fun. Sit down and enjoy the conversations and the joy of being with your young learners. Breathe in the tantalizing smell of muffins rising in the oven and give yourself the time and space to engage in these extended activities. Feast on some comfort food and engage in some delicious early science and math learning!

If you’ve got pancake fans in your classroom (and who doesn’t), we’ve got a great lesson plan for you here. Don’t forget to click on the Connect With Families button in the upper left corner of the lesson page to download a letter that gives families all of the information they need to continue the learning at home.

In my previous blog, I discussed the creation of learning boxes and child-centered spaces in order to cultivate an inviting, investigative, and encouraging math environment for children of all ability levels.  Objects are included in these boxes with the intent of inspiring young children’s curiosity, engaging participation in their own learning of skills and concepts, and encouraging discovery and innovation with the acquisition of new skills and concepts.  Including rulers, tape measures, yard sticks and even yarn or string into your catalogue of math tools will boost a child’s investigative desire.

Measurement is one of the earliest mathematical concepts that children learn.  Comparing the sizes of objects, determining which toy is the biggest, comparing which child is the tallest, and identifying that a plane is high up in the sky or a car is far away are all examples of how young learners begin to understand this concept. Building upon this understanding creates the foundation of logic, reasoning, comprehension and critical thinking skills necessary to set a child on a positive math journey. Exposure to these early experiences helps children begin to formulate interpretations of mathematical qualities in real-world problems.

Countless scholars and researchers have studied the significance of early math exposure, and the correlation between this and projected proficiency and success. Click here to listen to a top scholar discuss why early math matters!  It is during the early years, that children acquire, practice, rehearse and build upon the skills that will eventually carry them through life.

One way I have found to engage young learners in the attainment of these skills is by allowing them to compare and measure. They often measure one another with yardsticks or tape measures, sometimes standing and other times lying on the ground. They have also traced one another with chalk on the driveway, and then measuring themselves that way.  Often times they walk around our yard and measure flowers, plants and objects. This is a fun, entertaining and engaging activity, and they don’t even realize how much they are learning!

Recently, we realized that a sunflower seed we had planted was beginning to sprout and grow taller and taller.  Each day my kids would observe the stalk getting bigger and bigger.  First, it was taller than the grass, then the flowers, then each one of them!  They loved seeing the change and comparing the height, and I enjoyed watching their amazement.

Finally, one day they asked if it was taller than I was, and it floored them to realize that it was!  We decided to get out the yardstick and measure its final height, just as the sunflower’s face was beginning to bloom.  We discussed how to measure an object and which end to start with.  Then we had to do some adding, since the sunflower was taller than the yardstick (another discovery).  We had a great time checking in on our gigantic plant each day, until we discovered that her head had gotten too heavy and had fallen to the ground.  We did not stay upset too long, because soon they got the idea to get out the rulers and tape measures yet again to measure the width of that as well, which introduced a whole new math lesson on diameter and circumference!

Observing, measuring, comparing and analyzing the things around us helps young children make sense of their world.  This can be an enjoyable way for young children to practice important math skills while guiding their own mastering of significant concepts.  These experiences will then inspire, motivate and encourage them throughout their own life journey.  I hope you enjoy fostering and cultivating your own special math adventures!

Of the three children who are using the turkey basters as a tool to move the water, none of them are using it the way it is intended.  Since we don’t know the background of the children we can’t assume that they have had or have not had experience using turkey basters or observing others using them.  This may be their first opportunity to play with them in the water table. They appear to understand that somehow the liquid is supposed to go into the tube and the rounded end is for squeezing.  They do not know that the rounded end is also key to getting the water up and into the tube. They are using the basters pretty successfully as tools for stirring the water.

The water table is rich with mathematical experiences for children.  Not only are they estimating and measuring, they are also problem-solving .  In this scenario, we can also see the children motor planning**.  They have to figure out how to use both of their hands simultaneously to hold the cups, pour the water, make the water wheel spin, and hold the baster. Both the turkey basters and the making the water wheel turn require a sequence of coordinated movements to make them work.

Now watch the next video.  In this one, one of the teacher has come over and is providing scaffolding around the use of the turkey basters.  What do you think?

How would you support these children? How specific would you be in offering instruction?  How do you know when to provide exact directions for problem-solving and when to encourage independent problem solving?  When do you “teach” and when do you “scaffold?”

One of the things I consider when deciding which technique to choose is whether or not, through observation and experience, and trial and error, a child could figure how to do something (in this case-manipulate a turkey baster) on his/her own.

In the video, the teacher explains the required sequence of manipulations for the basters to work.  She explains to the child that he needs to squeeze the rubber end, put it into the water, release the end so the water will be sucked in, and then squeeze the rubber end to move the water out.  I don’t know about you, but I think this is a very complicated tool to learn how to use. To be honest, I’ve seen many a grown-up fail to use a turkey baster correctly come Thanksgiving time.

You have to follow the sequence exactly or it won’t work.  For young children, especially those under three, following these multi-step directions is very difficult.  As they focus on one part of the problem, they can’t (or find it extremely difficult) to pay attention to the other details at the same time. They may be able to squeeze the rubber end and put it into the water, but then remembering to release it and let the water rise is probably too many things to expect a very young child to be able to do.  You can see that even after the teacher has explained it a few times, the boy continues to struggle while he little girl uses the baster to scoop the water out of the cup.

In the case of a complicated tool, I would show children the steps to make it work.  However, I would focus on the first step, until the children are successful before moving on to the subsequent steps.  I would also play alongside the children and model using the tool.  Remember to encourage the children to follow the steps by explicitly saying, “First squeeze.  Then put the tip in the water.  Then release and watch the water go up.”  Keep repeating this sequence until the children are able to complete the sequence themselves.  They will be so thrilled when they master this tool.

**Motor planning is the ability to conceive, plan, and carry out a skilled, non-habitual motor act in the correct sequence from beginning to end. 

https://nspt4kids.com/healthtopics-and-conditions-database/motor-planning/

I like them because….

1.  They are long.  Children can attach lots of these together to create a “super straw” that spans the length of a room, or at least the length of a table.

2.  They are just flimsy enough.  Sometimes, the lack of strength of a material provides just enough of a challenge to make it interesting.

3.  They are versatile.  Children will find a million and one ways to use this manipulative.

The small joints that hold the straws together are a choking hazard for children under 3, so be sure to check this before investing in these.  However, if you do have some materials in a separate place for older children, these would be a good addition to any math center.

Weather is in and of itself filled with mathematics.  I finally learned what a negative number was when a teacher used a thermometer to illustrate “Below Zero” as negative numbers.  AHA! I got it!

We measure the weather, we predict the weather,and  we chart/graph the weather. During April we will look at a variety of ways to do all of this with young children.