“Hey everybody! Look at all of the tomatoes that are ripe today!” shouts Jacob to the gang.

“Can we eat them for lunch? Can we?” asks Lucus.

“Can we eat them now?” pleads Elizabeth.

It’s early September and preschoolers around the country are learning about apples, but we have tomatoes at our fingertips. The same tomatoes that we planted in the spring, watered, watched and then forgot about and ignored. But today these plants are full of red, ripe, juicy tomatoes. For the foreseeable future, our curriculum will revolve around tomatoes!

There’s been a lot of talk recently about curriculum themes and how they fit into early childhood education. So much of the learning that takes place in early childhood settings is spontaneous, rather than intentional. This doesn’t mean that early childhood educators shouldn’t be intentional about their curriculum development. They should. But great teachers are always willing to set their planned activities aside to seize a great learning opportunity when it arises.

I call these unplanned learning opportunities “teachable moments.” In so many ways, the child is the curriculum. By observing our early learners closely to see what ignites their curiosity, we can identify and build on the teachable moments that we encounter throughout the day.

Once we’ve identified a teachable moment, we can make the most of these spontaneous early learning adventures (and meet our early learning standards) by sharing our insights and asking questions that encourage children to dig deeper and make more connections as they engage in rich, authentic, hands-on learning that only looks like play.

After we engage in these impromptu investigations with our early learners, we can share the fruits of their learning adventures with parents and administrators, so that they can begin to understand how teachable moments can be harnessed to help prepare young children for the transition to kindergarten and success in the larger arena of life.

Soon, the stores will be filled with crisp, delicious fall apples, which will give rise to many of their own teachable moments, beginning with the letter “A.”  But today we have tomatoes, so we’re seizing the moment to harvest, sort, count, compare and investigate nature’s bounty!

It is only through genuine interactions and availability that teachers can identify these moments and act accordingly and spontaneously. Teachable moments require you to “think on your feet” and be flexible enough to stray from your planned path. If children’s interests take them in a direction that you hadn’t anticipated or planned for, you have to be ready to seize the moment and use it as a gift. Follow the joy of your students and your curriculum will develop organically!

“Look how many tomatoes are growing on this one vine!” Owen exclaims to his friends.

We are now collecting data and comparing attributes. Spontaneous discussions unfold as the children explore topics such as where the sun shines in the morning and which tomato plants get the most sunshine.

But how do the tomatoes ripen and turn red under all of those leaves? By observing, investigating and learning that living things grow and change, the children are building a strong foundation for future learning in earth science and life science.

We keep it simple. This type of learning is always developmentally appropriate because the children’s investigations are guided by each individual’s level of brain development.

“Avery, don’t eat them all!” cries one child as Avery pops a couple of freshly plucked tomatoes into her mouth.

We are exploring the concept of “many vs. few.”  But some of the children are too young to care about this concept and just want to experience the sweet deliciousness of a ripe tomato straight from the vine.

Our tomato harvest has all of the hallmarks of a true STEM learning adventure: investigation, discovery, collaboration and discussion. The children are learning through their senses: the visual task of surveying the tomato plants and comparing and categorizing the tomatoes as unripe (green or pale orange) or ripe and ready for harvest (deep orange); the tactile pleasure of separating a plump ripe tomato from its green stem; and the delicious sensation of biting into a tomato, still warm from the sun, and feeling it explode on the tongue. All of the goodness of nature and little brains in motion!

While two-year-old Lauren is more focused on picking the tomatoes and filling her bowl, some of the preschool-age children are busy trying to collect as many as possible. “Look how many I have!” squeals Linnea. “I have more than you!”

As the children explore the physical properties of the tomatoes, we are suddenly counting, estimating, comparing attributes and organizing by color and size. We have vocabulary and math flowing off of the children’s lips, which are stained with the juice of the ripe tomatoes. We are meeting our early learning standards—and the children are developing their own curriculum as they go!

Children construct their own understanding of the world when we provide them with a rich learning environment (in this case, our tomato garden) and ample time to explore, discover and investigate. We want children to think for themselves and not simply follow a preconceived curriculum or theme.

By taking advantage of authentic learning experiences in sensory-rich environments, we are setting the stage for the natural integration of early learning standards and successfully incorporating STEM knowledge into the daily lives of our early learners.

When you foster the development of a creative learning environment where children can find joy in learning, you will discover that your curriculum and lesson themes will spontaneously arise. In other words, let the children lead and the curriculum will follow!

Once the children have “followed their bliss,” introduce the books and thematic materials that support their interests. Build on their energy, enthusiasm and inquisitiveness.

If you head to the tomato garden, I think you’ll agree: early childhood STEM education has never tasted so good!

“Vera, Vera!  Come see how bright the colors are in my rainbow!” Four-year-old Owen is ecstatic about his discovery of a colorful collection of wet chalk after a summer shower in our outdoor classroom. This happy accident has paved the way for a sensory adventure as we meet our math and science early learning standards through play.

Owen is our engineer of playful learning. “This chalk feels different and it is so smooth to write on the sidewalk. Hurry, Vera!”

Owen is our full-of-life friend who loves to explore and discover and test out new ideas. He will extend the play until it’s time to leave or his stomach begins to rumble with hunger. He is also great at retaining the lessons he has learned for future exploration and discovery. Owen is our poster child for scientific investigation and math foundation!

“Owen, you can blend all of the colors! Do it with your feet!” Vera shouts back.

Vera is Owen’s partner in crime. There is nothing that beats the joy of childhood summers and outdoor learning. We don’t need worksheets to meet our early learning standards. We just need time to investigate, explore and experiment with a little bit of water, a bucket of chalk and our favorite friends. Water turns sidewalk chalk into an entirely different medium—transforming a dry and dusty classroom staple into a creamy and vibrant tool of creative expression. Trust me: Wet chalk will open up new avenues of imagination, exploration and learning in the preschool brain!

“Parker! Can you draw a person using shapes?” asks Avery, prompting her creative collaborator to tackle a new challenge. Here come our math standards, sneaking their way back into our play. Math vocabulary is exploding in our outdoor classroom. We are suddenly discussing lines and patterns and shapes and sizes. Blending is a form of addition, grouping, sets and prediction.

“I think the chalk will dry lighter,” Owen predicts as Vera nods in agreement.

“Why?” asks three-year-old Avery.

“Because the color of the dry chalk in the basket is lighter than the wet chalk on the sidewalk,” Owen answers. “Let’s try it!”

At Owen’s prompting, the children run off to conduct their latest experiment.

Ah, yes. The wet chalk has presented us with a priceless teaching-and-learning moment initiated and carried out by the children in our program. We have science as we observe, ask questions, problem-solve and draw conclusions. We have cause and effect, data analysis and design as the group tests out its theory. The mathematical and scientific inquiry has begun—and a whole new chapter of learning has become our curriculum for the day. This is why early childhood educators create their lesson plans at the end of the day—to build on the day’s explorations and extend them into the following day’s lessons. This is child-led learning!

Today, we have chalk investigative play happening. Our children discuss textures and exchange observations as they collaborate on their art in progress. Through their play with wet chalk, the children are describing and comparing physical properties. They are exploring concepts of force and motion as they draw with different amounts of pressure or drop dry pieces of chalk onto the sidewalk to create chalk bombs that explode on impact.

We spend a lot of time discussing math and science early learning standards here. But our day of chalk play also played an important role in preparing the children in our program for a successful transition to kindergarten.

Following are a few insights into the hidden benefits of chalk play—insights that can be shared with parents who may question the value of outdoor play and its role in advancing their children’s kindergarten readiness:

Kindergarten, sadly,  involves a lot of sitting time. Children need strength throughout their bodies—including strong core muscles to sit all day. When children get down on their hands and knees and support their upper-body weight with their arms and hands, this strengthens their core muscles, as well as their shoulder muscles, which are so important for fine-motor dexterity. Small pieces of chalk promote the development of the tripod grasp needed for pencil gripping. Drawing big chalk rainbow arches requires children to cross the midline. Why is this so important? Kindergarteners need midline-crossing skills so that the dominant hand can efficiently move from left to right across the page.

These are all bonuses for kindergarten readiness—above and beyond the early learning standards. This is the foundation that we talk about when we play our way into academic life. These small steps will enable our children to succeed when it’s time to sit at a desk.

“My chalk is shrinking really fast!” giggles Rowan.

Oh, how I love shrinking chalk! Yes, we are definitely collecting data, making observations and noticing cause and effect. But there’s more happening here than meets the eye. We know that the transition to smaller writing utensils helps promote the development of better gripping skills. As the children continue to draw and their pieces of sidewalk chalk get shorter and smaller, they are effectively transitioning to smaller writing tools and strengthening their gripping skills. We try not to rush writing in our young learners. But when it happens spontaneously, we try to promote the use of smaller pieces of chalk, crayons or pencils to help them develop age-appropriate gripping skills.

You never know where play will lead your little learners. But trust that there will be learning happening as the children share insights and ideas while building strong and trusting friendships. So let the children play in their outdoor classroom—and join in the “alfresco fun” as you meet your early learning standards!

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!

Struggling:  As a parent, there is nothing worse than watching your child struggle.  The awful truth is that every child, including my own, struggles. So, what do we as parents when our child is having a difficult time comprehending Math?

Some thoughts:  The help is at home.  It will take some time, patience and consistency, but it is doable!

1. Find a nice, quiet spot with space for math manipulatives and materials.
2. Try to work on math at a similar time every day.  I know how incredibly harried days can be. There are lots of extra-curricular activities and distractions, but it will really alleviate stress if you prioritize this difficult subject and give it some tender loving care.
3. Build in mental health breaks.  Don’t try to work through a concept or homework assignment without allowing time for a fun snack, or a 2-minute stretch break.
4. Celebrate the small successes and expect some frustrating moments.  Be ready for both and tell your child to expect ups and downs when working on something difficult.
5. Don’t be afraid to have your child write notes to the teacher.  And don’t you be afraid to write notes to the teacher as well. Communication is KEY! I am a big proponent on letting the teacher know what was tricky or letting him/her know that your child needs a bit of reinforcement on a specific concept the next day.  Also, don’t be afraid to talk about the amount of work coming home. If it is taking an inordinate amount of time, there should be no reason that your child cannot be assigned odd-numbered problems or half of the page so long as all concepts are being covered (Often homework assignments have many repeated problems and doing some of them can cover the concept).
6. Be flexible.  If one way of explaining does not do the trick, try another.  Some children need a visual explanation, others need to have their hands on blocks or unifix cubes, still others need to hear the information.  No one way is right, because every child is unique!
7. Try to be ok with allowing another person to do the explaining. This has happened to me!  While I was in the middle of working through a concept with one of my own children, an older sibling wandered in and explained it so simply I nearly cried. My child looked to the older sibling, had him repeat himself, and show her on the page and she got it.  It is ok if to look to others when your words and thoughts aren’t working.

Tips:

*Have a 100 chart nearby. The visual placement of numbers is useful.

*Keep manipulatives such as unifix cubes or place value blocks nearby.

*Store graph paper, blank paper, lined paper, pencils and a straight edge.  Get the graph paper with the larger sized blocks for younger children. There is graph paper that has larger squares on one side and slightly smaller squares on the other side.

*Most importantly, don’t be afraid to conference with friends who have children of similar age, peers who have slightly older children and have already gone through similar concepts with their children or the teacher.

*Remember, no one way of explaining always works.  When one way is not computing for your child, be flexible and try another.

****Don’t be afraid to use the computer to look up a strategy or method.  I have been doing this for years and do it all the time. *****

It was very early on in my parenting life when I realized that even though I thought I knew a lot about children, I really didn’t.  I was young (ish) and had been through a lot of school.  I had been a teacher for a few years but none of that added up to knowing about children.

I was one of those moms who called the pediatrician every time Noah peeped, looked funny, or cried for no apparent reason.  Nothing I read in the books and nothing I had done with other people’s children had prepared me to be a mom.

We did OK.  We figured it out.  We gutted it out.  But once we enrolled the kids in a quality child care center, I really began learning about caring for young children.  I don’t even think the teachers were aware of how much of an impact they had on me as a mom, and on the other parents.  Without expressly doing anything, they modeled behaviors, affect, language, systems, and practices that were effective and enlightening.

The message here is that you should always remember that parents are watching you.  Even if they don’t ask, or let you know that they don’t know, they need help and support.  The simple act of squatting down to speak to a child at eye level, will model a “best practice” for parents.  Before you know it, they will adopt those behaviors as their own.

Project EQUALS provides workshops (not really helpful unless you live in the Bay Area) and curriculum materials for teachers, parents, family, and community members.

According to the website, the page for mathematics for young children and their families is called Family Math.

FAMILY MATH focuses entirely on families learning mathematics together. In FAMILY MATH, mathematics becomes a challenging and engaging learning experience for everyone. Its math topics connect to the school curriculum, including algebra, probability, statistics, estimation, logic, geometry, and measurement.

 

Check it out here.

Would you explain to parents that children begin to make sense of the world by observing all of its dimensions, shapes, characteristics, and relationships?  This happens before the acquisition of language which makes it the foundation from which language grows.

Would you communicate to parents that early math learning leads to less math anxiety, stronger interest in math, and stronger math confidence later in life?

Would you share the research with parents that shows math as the foundation for learning technology and the sciences?

Would you tell parents that early math learning leads to stronger outcomes in math proficiency later in life as well as in other academic areas?

Would you show parents how incorporating math into their everyday lives is as easy as reading books or telling stories?

How else would you communicate this very important message?

Check it out here.

As Early Math Counts looks at balance as a mathematical concept for young children this month, it is important to remember that teachers of young children need to find balance in their own lives while supporting our parents as they seek to find balance in their own.

One of the ways we can do this is by modeling balanced behavior.  Our classrooms do not need to be rushed, pushed, ruled by time limits, or pressure.  Children’s play should be open-ended and free.  The other day I was observing at a very nice center, but the feeling in the classroom was that they were just trying to do too much.  There were two teacher-directed, product-focused art activities going on simultaneously and I could feel the tension as the teachers were determined to get these projects done on that day.  Both projects were Thanksgiving-themed and when I asked about them, the teachers said that their parents expect the children to come home with Thanksgiving centerpieces and other art projects that will decorate their holiday tables.

I say, “Just Stop.”  It may take a few rounds of holidays to get the parents used to it, but they will eventually appreciate your efforts at keeping their children’s days consistent and free from unnecessary pressure to produce. Your classroom can be an island of calm during frenetic times.  This is a good thing.

We can also model balance by ensuring that the children’s daily schedule is evenly divided into appropriate chunks with the vast majority spent in free play (both indoors and outdoors).  If children spend their days playing hard, they will go home sufficiently tired and well-spent, ready for dinner, bath, and bed.  Children who spend their days in large groups with pressurized expectations will go home strung out and in need of play.  You can help ease up parent evenings by appropriately exhausting their children via big and wonderful play.

Next Friday is the day after Thanksgiving, so there will not be a post.  However, I will continue exploring Work-Life Balance on the following Friday by offering more suggestions on how to support families as they navigate these wonderfully difficult years.

Kathy has the benefit of hindsight as her children are mostly grown and she has worked in the field of early childhood education, in one capacity or another, for eons.   I appreciate how positive her responses are even though each of her children had vastly different early childhood  experiences.

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1.  Please describe how you are involved in the field of education.

 I am a professor, researcher, teacher and college administrator.

2.  How many children do you have and how old are they?

I have 4 children and they are 18, 22, 25 and 31

3.  Describe your children’s early childhood experiences.  Did they stay at home with a family member? Did they attend preschool or childcare? Did they attend a home-based childcare program, or a combination of the above?  (If your children have not yet entered a childcare setting, please answer these questions for the future, i.e., What do you hope your children’s math experiences will be? What are your plans for introducing math to your children at home?)

My children all had different experiences because they are between 3 and 6 years apart in age.  Some got me as a stay at home Mom while I attended graduate school (and had a childcare person come to the house sometimes daily, sometimes part-time and sometimes as needed), others attended preschool part-time, some full-time, some were in my own preK classroom when I worked.  Some had the lovely advantage of having au pairs who lived with us.

4.  Describe your children’s exposure to math in their prekindergarten years both at home and at school.

My children had many “math manipulatives” in the house and I played games with them, let them explore, taught them and emphasized mathematical thinking such as before, after, more, less, greater, less than, plus, minus etc. They also played school together a lot and practiced their “math”.  Their schools were often university laboratory schools and Montessori schools and were well versed on not only providing a positive environment for mathematical literacy, but actually “teaching and guiding” math learning.

5.  Knowing what you now know about raising and educating children, what worked well in your children’s early math experiences?

I have to say that I think one of my children chose to get a degree in math because she loved the challenge, but also loved the fact that there was a right answer to the problems.  Even as a small child she was interested in time and how long things took and solving mysteries.  Most importantly, she had a great math teacher in high school that she is still in touch with and still has as a mentor.

My oldest is what I would call an artist and math just came easy for her too.  My musician son claims to not be good in math and not like it, but I have observed he does just fine in all college math classes and tests…so I believe he just does not like the formulas etc. 

My youngest is a “math natural” too. 

I think having lots of materials for them to experiment with helped…having good teachers really helped.  In fact, besides the home environment, that is probably the most important thing. My youngest had a 3^rd grade teacher who taught the kids cribbage and they had daily tournaments all year long.  He learned his math facts so fast and so well that he can tell you every way to get to 15 or 31 that there is:)

GAMES work

6. What didn’t work well?

My musician son had a poor and absent teacher in 3^rd grade and I believe it greatly influenced his thinking about math and his perception of his ability to be good in math.  I should have provided more guidance during that time. In addition, with all of them, they soon enough surpassed my abilities and I never could use a graphing calculator…so I could not help them after they reached a certain level.  Luckily, they could help each other and we have an economist friend who helped with the super sophisticated stuff…like probability haha.

7. What would you have done differently at home?  Nothing actually

8. What would you have like to have seen done differently in their prekindergarten settings?  They were lucky in that they had great PREK settings….I would not change a thing