“I see the daddy cardinal, do you know where the mama bird is?” Four-year-old Noah, binoculars in hand, is busy counting birds in our outdoor classroom.

Are you aware that the annual Great Backyard Bird Count is coming up later this week? This is a great opportunity to create a bird-watching station and knock out some STEM and early learning standards while encouraging family involvement.

Mark your calendars for Feb 12-15 and join us for this fun and educational week!

February and March are good months for bird watching and bird counting in our program. This is a great way to accelerate STEM learning on days when below-zero wind chills make outdoor play impossible.

We have bird feeders set up right outside of our windows so that we can set up indoor bird-watching stations to give the children close-up views of their feathered friends.

We provide clipboards, books, binoculars and our abacus to help with the bird count. We also use this opportunity to teach our students how to tally on a tally chart. We reference the eBird website, which shares local sightings of different bird species.

I take the top ten birds sighted in our area on the eBird website and add pictures of those birds to our abacus. To do the same thing, just add your location to the eBird website and you’ll see which birds are sighted most often in your area. It’s quite fabulous!

We also like The Cornell Lab and the Audubon Society. I have the Cornell Lab Merlin Bird ID app on my phone to help us identify birds by their songs.

Your local U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may also be able to provide free materials for bird identification. There is a big difference between bird identification books for children and those that were written for mature bird watchers. I would check some out at your local library or bookstore before purchasing.

This is a great opportunity to practice not only counting, but grouping by attributes or close observation of the differences between a downy woodpecker and a red-bellied woodpecker.

We try to keep a ruler nearby for our older children to use to determine whether they have spotted a six-inch downy woodpecker or a nine-inch hairy woodpecker. This offers the children an opportunity to use estimation and practice using real tools for observation.

This is also a great time to introduce Venn diagrams for clarification and documentation.

By creating a comfortable and inviting place for the children to birdwatch—complete with pillows, chairs and tables with baskets of binoculars—you can encourage them to slow down and observe more often.

By planting native plants in your outdoor classroom, you will also attract more birds to your bird-watching stations.

We remind our kids that outdoor birds are hard to spot but easy to hear. We ask them to close their eyes and point to where the song is coming from. I like to teach common mnemonics like the American Robin’s cheery up, cheerio, which can be picked up on almost any bird walk in the United States. Learn some mnemonics for common birdsongs here.

We have tried the inexpensive plastic binoculars from school-supply stores and toy aisles. They really didn’t work well and broke the same day that we brought them out. Smaller, child-sized binoculars are much easier for little hands to manage. Children enjoy using “real” tools and will treat them with much more respect than a pair of cheap plastic ones. I often teach them how to focus the binoculars to get a clear image. I place these binoculars in a basket, along with the identification books. We also stock our bookshelves with a wonderful collection of books about birds, nests and hatchlings.

We talk so much about STEM these days. This is one of the easiest and most magical ways to create a learning hub that can inspire young learners to engage in STEM exploration and discovery.

By participating in these learning adventures, you can learn right along with the children as you observe, ask questions, draw conclusions and discuss your findings with your early learners.

When we observe birds from our indoor birdwatching stations and then take those same observational skills outdoors, we have a deeper understanding of the birds we see and the birdsong we hear.

By adding the technology from the websites mentioned above and building bird feeders from oranges or peanut butter and seeds, we can include engineering in our learning adventures. We can include math as we count the number of birds arriving at the feeder and then subtract the birds that fly away. By grouping, measuring and comparing the birds, we can meet our early learning standards and benchmarks.

I hope you will join us in our Great Backyard Bird Count this year. Birds of a feather flock together. Come join the fun!

There are two rather sophisticated, fun and fantastic books that I want to tell you about this week.

The first is a book written by Barbara Kanninen and illustrated by Serge Bloch called Circle Rolls.

The main character in this book is a spunky, bespectacled Circle. That’s right, a circle—and all kinds of funny things happen when Circle starts to roll.

As Circle rolls, he smacks into Oval, who rocks because he is not perfectly round, and Square, who sits because his sides are straight. As Rectangle is bumped into, he stands and, as Triangle is smacked, he points. Then, as Circle hits the point of the Triangle, he POPS!  All kinds of crazy things happens when Circle pops and, soon, other shapes get involved.

This book is perfect for talking about the attributes of each of the shapes (the circle is round, the triangle has three sides and three points, etc.) In addition, the words rhyme. Rhyming helps children experience the rhythm of language. Through rhyming, they can anticipate the rhyming word, which will help them with making hypotheses, or predictions—an important early math and science skill.

My three-year-old grandson, Charlie, loves me to read this book with him—and we both laugh a lot when that circle POPS! Laughing and learning at the same time is a fantastic way to spend an early morning story time.

The second book is about a bunch of party-loving hippos called Hippos Go Berserk by Sandra Boynton.

Hippos Go Berserk starts with one hippo sitting all alone who calls two hippo friends to come over. Those hippos bring other friends and the party begins as the house fills up with hippos playing, partying and working.

They go BERSERK having a fantastic time all night long. When dawn breaks, the hippos start to leave in groups until just the one hippo is left, missing the other 44 that were with him all night long.

This is a great book for practicing counting, composing (adding) and decomposing (subtracting). It is also a just a fantastically fun book that children and adults of all ages love.

I highly recommend these two fabulous, fun and fantastic books that will leave you and your children laughing while you learn!

Growing your own food can happen anywhere. From a small planter on the window sill to tilling the soil in your yard. Personally, I enjoy a mixture of pots and raised planters. Hardware stores with garden centers or Greenhouses are great resources to help you get started. I use pots for large root vegetables, potatoes and sweet potatoes, and for herbs that will take over the yard like mint or lemon balm. Trust me on the lemon balm! My son convinced me to put it in my raised planter several years ago and I am still regularly pulling it out because it is trying to overrun my carrots, strawberries, and melons.

At my former child care, spring was full of garden planning. I love how easy it was to incorporate a variety of different math explorations into growing food we would eat for our snacks or lunch. First we would count the number of pots that would be used for vegetables/fruits compared to flowers. Then, the seed packets were spread out on the table and the children voted on which ones they wanted to grow. There were a limited number of pots, so we could not plant all of the seeds. Peas, beans, and carrots were some of the favorites.  My family liked large tomatoes but the preschoolers did not until I introduced both cherry and pear varieties. These quickly became an annual favorite. Their small size, fun shape, sweet taste, and quick growing was intriguing to them. They would spend time during the day counting the yellow flowers and green tomatoes talking about how many they would eat.

After cleaning, the group would decide how many tomatoes each person would get to eat. This was a great way to explore the concepts of division and “fair”. Anyone with young children can validate that children will quickly notice if you have more than they do. This also gave us the chance to explore fractions in a fun and engaging way. When there was not an even amount, which happened often, we would cut up the remaining tomatoes so that everyone would have a piece. This gave me the opportunity to talk with the children about fractions, such as ½, ⅓ , and ¼. Cutting a cherry or pear tomato into 1/4ths takes some practice! There is a great trick that you can use with two plates to cut large groups in ½ quickly. Click here to watch! There was a great deal of counting and recounting to make sure everyone had the same amount. Then the feast would begin.

In my area, starting in June, there are several farmers markets that offer a wide variety of seasonal goodies to take home. Everything from fresh fruits and vegetables, to canned jams and pickled garlic, to pints of honey. It is an explosion of different flavors and textures for the taste buds. Though many vendors will take credit cards several of them still prefer the old fashion method of paying with cash. This can lead to a wonderful opportunity for children to learn about how currency is used for exchanged.

My boys enjoyed visiting the farmers market in their youth both locally and wherever we traveled. We would gather some loose change from around the house then stop by the local bank to get some dollar bills, mostly one’s and five’s to make it easy for counting. On Main Street we would visit the different vendors to check out all of the yummy items offered. Larger items such as watermelons we would leave that until the end of the shopping, though reflecting back we should have learned from some of the other families and simply brought our little red wagon.

When we would find something that looked tasty, there would be a discussion about the price to make sure that we had enough money and whether we wanted to spend that much. We encouraged the boys to count out the amount of dollars and cents needed to purchase the item. Mathematical concepts such as addition and subtraction were practiced in this fun and interactive manner. We all got to interact with other people and the boys were able to satisfy their hunger…and…for anyone with young children,  you know this can be a leading factor in many decisions. These interactions helped to bring the abstract concept of large numbers, 100/500/1000, into the real world for them because these numbers simply became $1/$5/$10. Quarters, dimes, and nickels were quickly added to figure out how to make change.

Some activities to try before venturing out into the Farmers Market are:

• Practice exchanging coins. Start out simple with exchanging pennies for nickels, dimes and quarters.
• Move up to creating different ways to exchange the coins for a dollar.
• Model the use of cash when possible while shopping for small purchases.
• Think about simple games that you can play using coins.
• If you child has a piggy bank full of coins offer to exchange them for larger coins and dollar bills.

Helping children how to understand the impact of money will assist them in making wise purchases as they grow into adults. Both of my boys, now adults, are very comfortable with handling currency because they were able to explore this concept in a real world situation that was in a low risk atmosphere where they interacted with adults who supported their exploration of money.

This was a great exploration activity for me regarding early counting skills. We would count the number of holes. Then go out to the flower beds to find that number of different types of flowers to cut and bring inside. As I placed the flower stems into the holes I  my understanding of numbers and one-to-one correspondence developed in a positive way. There were not red marks on a paper if I had the wrong amount, simply extra flowers that would need a different vase. Sometime there would be too few and together we would figure out how many more were needed. This type of self correction made it easy for me to understand the one-to-one relationships between the number of holes and the number of flowers

I spent many hours arranging and then re-arranging flowers in the frog. The number of flowers always remained the same when I filled up all of the holes.  As a young child this surprised me because young children are starting to learn that the number of items remain the same even when you rearrange item in several different ways.

From the time I opened my child care until it closed, there were at least 2 flower pots with flower plants in the outside play area. This allowed for a wide variety of exploration and discussion. Some of the favorite activities that the children completed were:

• Counting seeds, creating a hole in the dirt, placing a seed, then covering it up.
• Measuring out the water that would be given to the plant in a plastic measuring cup.
• Marking on the calendar the days that we watered the flowers and the days where the soil was moist so we did not need to.
• Placing a ruler next to the plant and noticing how much it grew over the days.
• Counting the number of flowers and buds.
• Comparing the number of petals or size of the different flowers.

Another benefit for this type of learning about math is that flower pots helps children to connect with nature in a meaningful way. They begin to understand the cycle of living things and what plants need in order to thrive. Children have the ability to explore in an environment that supports their growing minds. Plus there is the added benefit of being able to bring some beautiful colors and smells into the home.

Flower gardens are easy to grow in almost any climate. I live in what is call a High Desert where there is limited rain, an average of 300 days of sunshine, surrounded by mountains, with temperatures that can fluctuate over 20 degrees from the hottest to coldest part of the day, and the town sits at 4,500 feet above sea level. The key to success is to talk with your local Extension Office or Garden Center to see what grows best in your area. Note: It is important to consider the spread of the plant as some can quickly spread when planted in the ground. I had mint one year that spread into the lawn and roses…… but oh it smelled amazing.

This lesson is pretty interesting.  It is about “counting back.”  It says that it is for Prek-2nd, but I think it is pretty complex for most 4 year olds.  You might have some children who would benefit from a lesson like this.  Check it out.

I have been busy these past couple of months writing some online training modules for early childhood practitioners about young children and math.  These will eventually be available through the INCCRRA/Gateways training site and will be free of charge.  Should be cool.

One of the things I keep reading about is how certain skills and competencies develop naturally and intuitively while others are less natural and come later.  One of these is subtraction.  Once children have an established sense of number, they begin to compose (add) and decompose (subtract) numbers.  However, since we nearly always count forward with children, counting backward is much harder.

Examples:

A child is passing out instruments from the instrument box.  He gets to the bottom of the box and there are three children left without an instrument.  The teacher asks, “How many more instruments do we need so that everyone has an instrument?”  The child the counts the leftover children, “1,2,3.  We need 3 more instruments.”

or

Two children bring some dolls to school to donate to the classroom.  One child brings 3 and the other child brings 4.  The teacher asks the children, “How many new dolls do we have for our classroom?”  The children know that they can count the first set and then continue counting (we call this “counting on”) the next set until they arrive at 7. Counting from 1 to 7 is something children have been working on for a really long time, maybe even every day since they started talking.  Counting forward is a fundamental mathematical skill.

It is much less usual for children to practice counting backwards.  I’m sure there are other examples, but the only one that comes to mind, is when we count backwards from 10 when a rocket is about to take off.  But then I thought of all of those songs we sing with young children that are about “taking away.”  You know the ones I mean: 10 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, 5 Little Ducks Went out One Day, 5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Fence, etc.

So, when you are singing these songs with the children, are you using mathematical language to highlight subtraction and take away?  Do you say, “One little duck ran away so we take away one, and we have 4 left?”  This is very important.  It is not enough to believe that simply singing the songs will instill the concept of subtraction in children as they may not even be making the connection between the number of ducks in the song at all.  To some/many children, this is just a song that they love to sing.  Explaining the song, is the grown-ups job.  The reason we sings songs like those above is because they are about subtraction.

Once your children can count forward, be sure to find opportunities for them to count backward.  This will help dramatically when they begin to subtract and take away.

Five Little Ladybugs

Five little Ladybugs climbing up a door

One Flew away then there were four

Four Little ladybugs sitting on a tree

One flew away then there were three

Three little ladybugs landed on a shoe

One flew away and then there were two

Two little ladybugs looking for some fun

One flew away and then there was one

One little ladybug sitting in the sun

She flew away and then there were none

Using one hand – five fingers – you can illustrate the idea that

5 take away 1 equals 4 and 4 take away 1 equals 3, etc.

There are several versions of this song (5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Fence, Way up High in the Apple Tree, 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed) that work well and my guess is that you know most of them.

Try putting a small ladybug sticker on each of your fingers or on each of the fingers of your children.  This will help them make the connection that the fingers themselves, represent the ladybugs in the song.  I also like to use a felt board when singing songs such as these. Have one child come up at a time to remove the ladybugs (they are taking away) so they can see that take-away means less or fewer. Each time there is one less ladybug until there are none.

The addition sign (+) shows that one number is to be added to the other.  If children have concrete examples of items in front of them and they are asked to count how many items there are all together, they are adding.  If you were to put 3 apples on a table top and then draw a large + sign and put 3 apples on the other side of it, the message is that the two sets of apples should be added together.  The representation of the equals (=) sign lets them know that the total number equals both sets all together.

The same is true for the minus (-) sign.  Children tend to understand the concept of take away more readily than subtraction, so I encourage you to use take away when you ask children to subtract.  You can add the word subtract so they can become familiar with it, but take away provides a concrete and visual description of the concept that supports the preoperational and the concrete operational child.

Try and add these three mathematical signs into your classroom.  When creating visual cues for children, use these signs to support the message you are communicating.   Find ways to incorporate the language of “addition,” “take away,” and “equals” into your conversations with the children.

Understand addition, and understand subtraction.

• CCSS.Math.Content.K.OA.A.1 Represent addition and subtraction with objects, fingers, mental images, drawings¹, sounds (e.g., claps), acting out situations, verbal explanations, expressions, or equations.
• CCSS.Math.Content.K.OA.A.2 Solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem.
• CCSS.Math.Content.K.OA.A.3 Decompose numbers less than or equal to 10 into pairs in more than one way, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each decomposition by a drawing or equation (e.g., 5 = 2 + 3 and 5 = 4 + 1).
• CCSS.Math.Content.K.OA.A.4 For any number from 1 to 9, find the number that makes 10 when added to the given number, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record the answer with a drawing or equation.
• CCSS.Math.Content.K.OA.A.5 Fluently add and subtract within 5.

¹ Drawings need not show details, but should show the mathematics in the problem. (This applies wherever drawings are mentioned in the Standards.)

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I appreciate the authors’ intent in this standard as they have clearly limited the learning outcomes for kindergarten-aged children by specifically restricting the range of numbers that children should be able to compute to and from.  Keeping it within a manageable range recognizes the complexity of the standard and manages expectations of children.

In the early childhood world, we explore this algebraic thinking (simple addition and subtraction) through songs and finger plays (5 Little Ducks Went Out One Day, 5 Green and Speckled Frogs, Way up High in the Apple Tree) using our fingers as visual cues to help children see one less duck or frog by folding our fingers down.  Usually, children still need to count the fingers that are still out as they are not quite able to “take away” yet. “Taking away” requires that children can go backward – but remember, many young children have simply memorized the numbers in order but reversing the order is very hard to do.

Simple addition using objects should be introduced during play.  If children are playing with blocks and they need “1 more”, be sure to verbalize that, reinforcing the vocabulary and the concept that “1 more” is “adding 1” to the set.  Keep it simple with numbers under 5.  If you find that you have children who are grasping this fairly well, broaden the number range to 10.