Sing and clap along to the tune of “Bingo.” 

There was a boy with dark brown eyes and Timmy was his name – O!

T – I – M – M – Y,

T – I – M – M – Y,

T – I – M – M – Y and Timmy was his name!

“Sing my name song next!” cries Evani.

“Please, can we sing my name song too?” implores another classmate of Timmy’s.

Do you play the Name Game? I simply take a familiar children’s tune, add a personal note if needed and spell out each child’s name to that tune.

I started playing this game more than 20 years ago because music plays a powerful role in brain development. One five-year study by a team of University of Southern California neuroscientists showed that music instruction accelerates brain development in young children—particularly in the parts of the brain responsible for processing sound, language development, speech perception and reading skills.

Children love the patterns and rhythms of songs. Setting words to music helps children learn them more quickly and retain them longer. Even a one-year-old will beam with pride the instant you start singing their tune. They may not be able to talk, but they know their name song!

Research also shows a connection between music and math in brain development. Musical patterns, rhythms and tempo make it easier for children to learn mathematical concepts such as sequencing, simple counting and patterns.

Emphasizing the steady beat of a song by clapping or moving to the music helps children master the concept of one-to-one correspondence (the understanding that each object in a group can be counted once and only once).

Music also helps build early literacy skills and promotes social-emotional development. The Name Game helps children learn through play as they explore the letters that make up each child’s name. When we start simply by inserting the letters of a child’s name into the Name Game, we give these letters personal meaning, which will incentivize the child to remember them.

As we play the Name Game, we are building a strong foundation for later literacy development activities such as letter recognition, letter names and letter sounds.

There is something magical about the Name Game and its capacity to keep children engaged for extended periods of time.

Musical rhythms sharpen developing attention skills. The fun of singing your own name song and the name songs of all of your friends can make learning joyful. The Name Game became a tradition at our center to keep the children entertained and happy while lunch was being prepared and served.

Here’s a “cheat sheet” to help you get started with the Name Game.

“The Wheels on the Bus” is a great song for three-letter names:

The letters in my name go J – O – E,  J – O – E,  J – O – E,

The letters in my name go J – O – E, 

That spells JOE!

Four-letter names work well with the “Happy Birthday” song: 

K – O – B – E, 

K – O – B – E,

My name is Kobe,

K – O – B – E.

“Bingo” is my go-to song for five-letter names.

Six-letter names work well with “Polly Wolly Doodle” or “Pat-a-Cake.”

Seven-letter names pair well with “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Eight-letter names work great with the song, “Muffin Man”

Nine-letter names? Try “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”

You get the idea! Let’s give it a try. Pick a child in your class (maybe the one who rocks your boat just a little bit, because we all have one and it’s to our advantage to have this child on our team.)

If you get stumped, head to your CD collection for inspiration and grab Taj Mahal, Ella Jenkins, Raffi or whatever song is a classroom favorite. This is the perfect opportunity to add music from the cultures that are represented in your classroom. Reach out to parents to ask for a favorite childhood song that you can match up to their child’s name. They will love you for it, I promise!

You can also use chants. The children who first played the Name Game in my classroom are in their mid-twenties now, but they still remember the song or chant that they used for each classmate!

Here are some examples to get you started:

M – A – D – I – S – O – N…Madison, Madison is our friend.

C – O – N – N – O – R…Our friend Connor is a soccer star!

Chants are a great place to start because you only need to rhyme with the last letter of the child’s name. You can also sneak the letters into the middle of the sentence if they have a hard letter to rhyme with, like the dreaded letter X!  Some letters, like W, will trip you up because that letter has three syllables. Take it slow, you won’t come up with these in a single night. Find a friend who can rhyme on a dime (haha) or a friend with a musical background. Friends like these can be extremely helpful when you are struggling with a name that’s difficult to set to music.

Each child believes they own their song, which they do. I try not to use the “Bingo” tune for more than one child in my class at a time. This may seem like an overwhelming task if you have a large class, so keep it simple. Maybe start with the first kids to be dropped off or the last to get picked up. Make sure you write down the tune and the words as they come to you. You will need your own cheat sheet in the beginning for reference.  

When children are actively listening to music, multiple areas in their brains are lighting up. By adding clapping, marching or other movements, we develop other areas of the brain. The more senses we use, the more we learn!

Give it a try. I promise you, it works like magic! If you’d like to add to my cheat sheet, make a comment below and we will start our own list to share with one another. Good luck!

Interested in other activities that help build early math skills?

• You’ll find some great counting songs in the Music and Movement section of our Noodle Cadoodle Counting lesson plan.
• Check out the Music and Movement section of our Monkey Mania lesson plan to pair music with counting and help children understand the concept of subtraction.
• Finally, our What’s in a Name? lesson plan offers more activities to foster the development of early math skills as children count, compare, contrast and graph the number of letters in their names. 

Click on Connect with Families on the left side of each lesson page, download the parent letter included with each lesson, personalize it for your class and your math curriculum for the week is complete!

“Who wants soup? I am making soup for lunch today!” Eleanor shouts to anyone willing to join her as she “cooks up” her concoction.

Eleanor is our concoction wizard. She can often be found adding loose parts to a large pot of water, mixing away while she muses about the ingredients she needs to add to her “recipes” for soup, magic potions and smelly perfumes.

“Aw, I don’t want soggy flowers in my soup!” Jose protests as he peers into the pot. “I like it better when you sprinkle them on top. Can you make the flowers dry again?”

Eleanor is a master at transforming dry flower petals into wet soup ingredients. But she hasn’t yet mastered the art of drying the wet petals with a swish of her stick.

“I can’t make them ‘not soggy’ anymore,” she admits. “But I can add some dry ones on top for you, sir.”

Questions such as “can it be undone” or “can I manipulate this” are all part of the learning process as our students engage in play with loose parts to investigate the phenomenon of transformation.

“Okay, great!” agrees Jose. “Can I have lots and lots of the red flowers on top, please?”

James comes running over to join the play. “What smells so delicious?”

“Acorn soup!” the children shout in a chorus of excited voices.

Our sensory-play kitchen is alive and well!

Sensory play activates and engages the senses—including touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing—while promoting the development of fine-motor and gross-motor skills.

When children engage in sensory play, they build new neural connections. These connections lay the foundation for language and motor development, creativity and essential life skills such as problem-solving, decision-making and memorization.

Imagine all of this cognitive development arising from a pot of acorn soup!

Acorn soup—or any magical, mystical concoction—can help children develop an understanding of math concepts in myriad ways, but most obviously through the use of mathematical language.

Imagine children mixing materials and discussing whether or not they should add more flowers, herbs, sticks, stones, pine needles or bark.

Quantity is a central concept in mixing. So it makes sense to incorporate pots and pans of all sizes, as well as measuring cups, to stimulate inquiry-based learning about quantity and volume, as children ask questions such as “How much should we add?” or “Do we want it to be thick like stew or thinner like soup?” It’s all part of building a child’s math vocabulary.

I could line up six young chefs to cook up pots of acorn soup and no two “recipes” would be alike. Children love to direct their own learning as they observe the “cooking” process and evaluate the ingredients that will make the best pot of “soup.” This is critical thinking at its best!

Whether you are cooking for play or actual consumption, it’s important to give children their own pots, bowls, measuring cups and utensils. Watching a friend cook is just not the same as engaging in hands-on, inquiry-based learning.

Real pots, pans, spoons, measuring cups and utensils help to “keep it real.” I delight in finding miniatures of good-quality cooking utensils. I love to use small stainless steel bowls. They are just the right size and they are affordable and easy to find at thrift stores. The same applies to measuring cups and spoons. Go with the stainless steel versions whenever possible. They always present well and they are sturdy and stain-resistant.

Children who are constantly engaging in “science experiments” or cooking up concoctions such as acorn soup are often exploring the transformation schema.

A schema is a repetitive pattern of behavior as children explore the world around them. Children who engage in the transformation schema will be fascinated by objects and their potential for transformation.

Play in this schema can be as simple as the transformation from dry to wet, from empty to full or from solid to liquid. Encourage children to investigate questions like these:

“How does this object change when I add water?” 

“Does the color change?”

“Does the texture change?”

“Does it smell different?”

By identifying and supporting schema play, you can tap into children’s interests and instincts while deepening and intensifying play and learning experiences.  

This is what STEM looks like! These preschool play moments pave the way for later learning in science, technology, engineering and math.

Experiences like these are integral to our mission here at Early Math Counts. Math is everywhere—in everything that we do with children and in every classroom activity. But we need to make the most of these math learning opportunities.

“Eleanor, is the soup ready yet?” Tucker asks from the other side of the yard. “How long does it have to cook?”

Ah, the ever-important gift of time. These periods of uninterrupted play stimulate brain development in a big way while enhancing children’s understanding of how the world (and math!) works.

So get your soup on!

“Hey, Evelyn!  Go get your cell phone and meet me at the stumps!” calls Noa.

My head whirls around as I check the classroom to see if a cell phone has actually made its way into school today. Then I see Evelyn running to the basket of dominoes to get her “cell phone.”

Whew! Instant relief and a touch of humor added to my day.

Dominoes have been around for centuries. They’ve been used for all sorts of games around the globe. We have baskets of dominoes scattered around the classroom. We use them for everything from building and matching to chain reactions. I’m fairly sure that we’ve never played an actual game of dominoes with these versatile learning tools!

I love these little blocks. Whatever the game, dominoes are always a Developmentally Appropriate Play (DAP) item, regardless of the ages of the children playing with them.

This morning’s “cell phone” incident got me thinking about Developmentally Appropriate Practice.

We need to trust that the teachers who work with young children on a daily basis know what’s appropriate for these children and understand how they use their materials.

Dominoes may not be designed for toddlers and preschoolers—and may even be considered to be Developmentally Inappropriate if used as intended.

Yet, by adding dominoes to our play areas and using them as manipulatives and loose parts, we can expose our early learners to a wealth of STEM learning opportunities such as building, counting, matching and even dramatic play.

Whether we’re building with our dominoes or standing each domino on end to create a chain reaction, we are laying the foundation for strong math and science skills.

This is when parents and administrators may misconstrue active learning for mere play.

When this happens, it’s our responsibility to help parents and administrators “see” the learning that is taking place. Show them how their children are developing spatial skills and an understanding of concepts such as “location” and “ordinal position.”

“Wow, Michela, your tower is getting really big!” Jameson stops to watch as Michela carefully adds another block to her structure.

Jameson has been struggling to build a tower that rivals Michela’s in height. “My tower is too wobbly,” he moans. “It keeps falling down. It’s impossible!” He stomps his foot in frustration and crosses his arms over his chest.

“You need to go very slow, like this,” responds Michela without taking her eyes off of her tower.

Michela is demonstrating the practice of science and engineering. We have geometry unfolding before our eyes as Michela uses symmetry, visualization, spatial reasoning and geometric modeling to solve problems such as balance and continuity.

By observing and asking questions, sharing ideas and solving problems, the children are working as a team to build a greater understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

This is a form of early data collection. If you are studying force and motion, a domino chain reaction is a great activity to demonstrate potential and kinetic energy.

I watch as four-year-old Thompson counts the pips (dots) on his dominoes and begins exploring concepts such as quantities and attributes.

Across the table, two-year-old Joseph is learning rote counting skills and gaining a rudimentary sense of one-to-one correspondence. By playing with the dominoes, he is also seeing the grouped pips (dots) in number formations that he will continue to see throughout his life.

I watch as an older friend mentors Joseph. In no time, Joseph is matching attributes—sometimes by pattern and sometimes by color. This is math!

We are exploring concepts such as “matching,” “same and different” and “up and down.” We are counting and beginning to understand numbers and number names. We are comparing quantities, subitizing and measuring objects and quantities. We are identifying common attributes, patterns and object relationships.

We are engaged in deep, hands-on, child-led play—without worksheets, themes or circle times. This is developmentally appropriate learning!

By providing more opportunities for children to explore, discover and investigate through active play, we are meeting one of the most important goals of early childhood education.

Invest in a variety of materials to meet the needs of children with different learning styles. It’s worth the cost. Think of it as an investment that will pay off in the future success of your early learners.

So grab those dominoes off of the shelf, place them in a basket and let the STEM learning begin!

Enjoy!

“Will the children be kindergarten ready if they spend their days playing outside?”

As educators, we are often asked about kindergarten readiness by nervous parents who want to give their children the best possible start in life.

It’s important for parents—and educators—to understand that there are endless opportunities for deep learning when children are connected to nature. Young children learn primarily through their senses. The natural world—with its stimulating and constantly changing elements—provides the ultimate sensory learning environment.

When children explore the world through sensory play, they are actively building new neural pathways, which is crucial for brain development. When we slow down enough to observe this process, it’s easy to see the learning that takes place, and the social skills that are being developed, as the children collaborate on projects in the great outdoors.

On an unusually warm day in May, the boys in our program are busy building a large castle in the sandbox. This may look like nothing more than sandbox play, but there’s some deep learning going on here as our castle architects lay the foundation for future academic success.

“We should build a moat!” declares Joshua.

“Yeah, a moat!” agrees the gang. “We definitely need a moat!”

With these words, the digging begins. Before long, the castle builders decide that it’s time to add water to the moat. We have plenty of buckets at our center, but today most of the buckets are already in use.

Looking around for a way to transport the water from the pump to the sandbox, the boys settle on a nearby piece of fabric from one of their forts.

We’re all hot, tired and likely a little dehydrated at this point. A glance at the clock tells me that it’s almost closing time. But who am I to redirect the boys by pointing out the empty bucket next to the fence?

I watch as the boys carefully stretch the material out and center it beneath the pump spigot to catch as much water as they can. Asa begins pumping and, to my astonishment, the fabric holds the water without any leakage.

WHAT in the world?  I’m marveling at this unexpected development when it occurs to me that the cloth I’d purchased from the resale shop is actually a waterproof fabric used in hospital settings.

When I ask the boys if they were aware that the fabric was waterproof when they grabbed it, they respond with a question of their own: “What does waterproof mean?”

I try to explain that waterproof means that the water will not flow through the fabric. But there are times for discussion and times for action—and the boys are already focused on the next step in their plan.

First, they gather the corners of the cloth, taking care to keep the water from gushing out the sides. Then they make their way gingerly across the yard to the sandbox and carefully place the fabric in the moat.

I realize at this point that the boys had deliberately ruled out the use of buckets because they needed a flexible, waterproof liner for their castle moat.

They had assumed that the fabric they chose would hold water and, at the same time, conform to the shape of the moat. Wow! They were way ahead of me!

The boys did eventually make multiple trips to the pump to fill some buckets and add more water to the moat. But they knew that the bucket wasn’t the best tool for the initial phase of moat construction. Silly me!

This is just another example of the importance of giving young children sufficient time to engage in deep play and problem-solving (without any interference from those of us who think we have all of the answers), as well as the importance of loose parts in creative play.

Look at the delight on their faces! Okay, so the castle architect on the far right in the photo below seems to be grimacing at the weight of the load, but the other two look pretty thrilled with the success of their mission!

When we look at children playing in sand, what are WE missing? They are busy designing, creating, collaborating and communicating. They are adding and subtracting, working with shapes and molds and inclines and declines. They are adding water to change the nature of their building material. They are using spatial awareness and math and science vocabulary. They are theorizing, hypothesizing and collecting data. They are engineering and deepening their knowledge—all while playing in a box of sand!

This is the ultimate in STEM learning. Give them as much time as they need. Let them play. Add fabric to your play centers. You never know where their outdoor play will lead them—and what YOU may learn in the process!

One bright fall morning, I notice that the noise level at Under the Gingko Tree is exceptionally low. A quick glance around reassures me that all of my early learners are safe and accounted for. Then I notice a quiet but intense play buzz happening in our rain garden, so I wander over to see what has captured the children’s unwavering attention for so long.

“See? We are using the log to make our hill!” Jameson explains to me. 

“We are rolling the rocks down the hill, but our hill has a tunnel!” giggles Noa. 

“They go in and then they roll down!” two-year-old Tariq tells me, trying to keep pace with his older friends.

“This rock is flat on this side. It won’t roll, just like Ricky!” Jameson reminds me. 

The rocks in the rain garden and a hollow log have triggered an idea from another one of our favorite books: Ricky, the Rock That Couldn’t Roll.

Ricky is a flat rock that can’t roll with his friends on their favorite hill. Ricky’s friends help him overcome his challenge and find a way for Ricky to play like everyone else.  

Suddenly we have piles of rocks that have the same names and characteristics as the rocks in the book. I love it when an idea takes hold and inspires creativity and collaboration as the children begin to plan an activity on their own.

We have a STEM morning unfolding in our outdoor classroom! When the children start using words like “in,” “down,” “over,” “under” and “next to,” they are laying the foundation for geometry. Oh, this is going to be a fun morning! 

As I watch the children design and develop models that represent their ideas, I think to myself, “This is what early math and science learning looks like.” Planning and carrying out simple investigations like this one will make your assessment nightmare seem like a dream. Math and science overlap so much in this morning’s quest for understanding. This is the kind of play that hones children’s problem-solving skills and enables them to meet important early learning milestones.

I see the young friends sorting and classifying piles of rocks—grouping the flat rocks together and then creating another classification for the rocks that will fit into the tunnel. I observe and listen as they demonstrate their comprehension of the sorting and classifying process by comparing and sharing descriptions. When children use words such as “short,” “wide,” “heavy” and “light,” they are using descriptors for measurement. When they are guessing, predicting, classifying and putting rocks in a specific order, they are engaging in early algebra. 

By making predictions, changing designs and collecting data for their next rock, the children are building the foundation for more advanced learning in data analysis and probability in the years to come.

“I think there is something blocking it in there….”  Jameson’s voice trails off as he inspects a rock more closely to see why it didn’t tumble in the way that he had expected. He has observed that the rock is encountering some resistance. This is friction!

This is how we lay the foundation of early science through childhood investigation and teamwork. Today, the children are learning about persistence and problem-solving, propelled by the simple but profound joy of creative play.

Now the children are discussing another STEM concept. “Should we flip the log on its other side or move it to a higher rock?” Jameson asks.

I introduce the vocabulary word for their latest STEM adventure: “elevation.”

“Like an elevator! It goes up to the top of the building!” Jameson declares.

I smile. It’s like throwing seeds into the wind. I never know which ones will land on a rock or take root in a little brain. Either way, this is learning through play. Changing the height (elevation) to get a faster roll is working with speed!

The children are also exhibiting a developing sense of spatial awareness as they work out where and in what direction the log should be placed.

“Maybe if we push it, it will go faster!” Sarah suggests.   

When you are working on those early learning standards, listen to the words that your students are using. When Sarah uses the word “push,” this is a change that leads to an action. The outcome of that action is an effect!

This is scientific investigation in progress. Words like “push,” “pull,” “launch” and “force” are all science action words. 

Ricky—the rock that started this play—is long forgotten. We have naturally moved on to racing our rocks down the tunnel. I am not sure that any child actually remembers which rock is “theirs,” but they know which rock came in first, second, third and last. These are the vocabulary words that tell us that the children are mastering rudimentary skills in numbers and operations. This is a morning of assessment magic! 

If you have ramps in your classroom, or this is the type of play that sparks your energy, try reading the book, Ricky, the Rock That Couldn’t Roll, aloud to the children. Then place some rocks that roll, along with rocks that don’t roll, in your block area. Observe the investigations that take place and check off some early learning standards of your own!

Happy November, my friends. Stay safe and keep playing!

]]> https://earlymathcounts.org/rock-and-roll/feed/ 14 13204 https://earlymathcounts.org/number-sense-make-it-real/ https://earlymathcounts.org/number-sense-make-it-real/#comments Tue, 14 Mar 2017 10:38:19 +0000 http://www.mathathome.org/blog1/?p=3948 posted by Dr. Bilge Cerezci

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.

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.

There are many reasons to provide “jobs” for children in the preschool setting. A job shows the importance of the child’s contribution to the group and his/her affect on the social fabric that is the class community; it provides practice in children’s developing social skills, such as speaking in front of the group to give a weather report or choosing a song to sing together with the whole class; it allows each child to have a turn in a “leadership” role by being in charge of a task; and then a particular job can present a pre-academic lesson in manner which is meaningful to the children in the group.

Setting the table for snack is one example of using math in a relevant way while practicing one-to-one correspondence, a foundational math skill needed in counting. In his/her role, the Snack Helper assists the teacher to prepare the tables for group snack. This responsibility ensures that each table has the appropriate number of snacks and also that each place where a child will sit has a snack… because it doesn’t really help to have all 18 snacks placed on one table when the 18 kids sit at 4 separate tables.

My school was a 5-day program and our class had the same 18 children each day, minus any absences. Because we occasionally had fewer than 18 children, and also because there may not have been a child to match every chair at each table (we had two tables that sat 6 kids and two tables that sat 4 kids, for a total of 20 seats), we designed four individual number cards showing the numeral, the number word and the number quantity (for practice subitizing) of either 4, 5 or 6 (four, five or six) – the possible number of kids at a table depending on attendance that day. Just as a reminder, the definition of subitize is to perceive the number of (a group of items) at a glance and without counting. It’s more or less the math equivalent of sight words.

The teachers placed the laminated number cards on each of the four tables, indicating to the Snack Helpers (there were two) how many snacks to set out. The Snack Helpers needed to “read” the cards and set the corresponding number of snack bowls and drinking cups for their classmates. It was not at all uncommon to see the two children working together to correctly set out snack for their friends. So in addition, we were supporting and encouraging collaboration and vocabulary while providing a great benefit to the teachers – help setting the table!

As an aside, we began the school year pouring milk or water FOR the kids, but after a couple of months, we provided small pitchers so that once seated, the children could practice this skill on their own. A pitcher like this one (almost 17 ounces /.5 liter) works really well for children since the lid helps minimize over-pouring.

It isn’t baby talk.  Baby talk is when you speak like a baby to other grown-ups, or older children.  The above-described speech was traditionally called “motherese” but is now called “infant-directed speech” or “parentese.”  Babies’ brains respond positively to this type of speech and their whole bodies respond to chanting and rhythm.  If you put an infant on your lap and bounce her to the rhythm of music or a chanted tune, the infant will nod her head, bounce her body up and down, and kick her legs and arms to the beat.

We can use this as a means of supporting mathematical concepts with infants.  Through repetitive chanting of songs, infants will begin to internalize number words and concepts.  If you sing “The Wheels on the Bus” with an infant in your lap, you can encourage the notion of “round and round” (spatial thinking) and “up and down” (more spatial thinking).  If you chant, “This Little Piggy” touching each of baby’s toes one at a time, singing,  “this little piggy went to market…” you will encourage “one-to-one correspondence.”