Algebra In Kindergarten? You Can't Be Serious!!

So, what does math in Kindergarten look like?  Parents should know that unlike the developmental stages of writing, math learning does not necessarily develop in a continuum.  Think of all of the concepts below as objects on the horizon that your child can reach out and grab at any given time.  Generally there are some that will occur prior to others, but essentially they all intertwine together.

According to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, students exiting kindergarten should be able to do the following:

Numbers and Operations:

• rote count to 100 and recognize numbers to 31
• recognize 1/2 of a shape
• use concrete items to compose and decompose values up to 10
• connect number words (orally) and quantities they represent

Algebraic Relationships:

• recognize or repeat sequences of sounds or shapes
• create and continue patterns
• model situations that involve whole numbers, using pictures, objects or symbols

Geometric and Spatial Relations:

• identify and describe 2 & 3 dimensional shapes using physical models
• describe, name and interpret relative positions in space 
• use manipulatives to recognize from different perspectives and orientations models of slides and turns

Measurement:

• compare and order objects according to their size or weight
• describe passage of time using terms such as today, yesterday, tomorrow
• identify and know the value of a penny, nickel, dime and quarter
• measure objectives by comparison of lengths

Data and Probability:

• sort items according to their attributes
• create graphs using physical objects

So what can I do?

Math surrounds us every day in everyday situations.  Therefore, to support your child's math development there is no need to break the bank with fancy learning toys or computer games.  The most important thing to remember is that 'drill & practice' is not the answer.  Children learn best through meaningful hands on experiences that support their development.  Below are a few ideas to get you started in each mathematical strand.

Numbers and Operations:

• Children learn best through play, therefore playing games that encourage synchronic counting will give your child a meaningful reason to use sequential counting for a purpose.
• "I'll Time You"  Children love to see how fast they can complete a task.  Tell your child that you'll time them, then count aloud as they rush to beat their time.
• Remove several number cards from a deck of playing cards. Provide a small bowl of m&m's or other small objects. Take turns with your child, choosing a card, naming the numeral shown on the card, and laying the corresponding number of objects next to the card.

• If you have stairs inside or outside your home, use masking tape to number them. As you climb the steps together, count the numbers aloud.
• Point out numerals in their environment. ex.,signs, license plates, mailboxes, clocks, etc...
• Using a calendar, count down the days until a special event.  "In four days, you get to spend the night with grandma."

• Break a cookie in half and share it. "Half for you and half for me."
• Write down grandma's phone number, have your child touch the numbers on the phone as you call.

• Sing familiar songs that use numbers and counting
• Change the words of familiar counting songs to make them silly or personalized for your child.

• Read books that have counting and numerals.

Algebraic Relationships:

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• Do a clap and tap rhythm pattern for your child to copy.  As her ability to copy improves, create more complicated patterns.  Let her create a pattern for you to follow.  
  • • •  

• Create a mealtime pattern.  Alternate between water, milk, juice to drink with meals. Encourage them to predict what will come next.

• Make a pattern with your child's colored fish crackers and see if they can continue it.

• Listen to and sing songs that have repeating patterns. The Chicken Dance is a fun patterning song to dance to.

• Read books that have patterns.

Geometric and Spatial Relations:

• • Set up an obstacle course for your child and talk about how he is crawling under the table, through the box, over the cushion, etc.
• Play Simon Says with your child using positional words like "on your head" or "behind your back"
• • Spread a few familiar objects on the floor in front of your child. Describe an object using positional words or shape words  “I spy something that is square behind the keys.”  See if your child can guess the object. Take turns giving clues and guessing.

• Have fun with making shapes.  Use sand or shaving cream to write in or play dough to build with and model the correct formation of shapes.
• Point out and name shapes in their environment.  Look for shapes in nature, in your home, and in pictures.

• Create edible shapes with pretzels or string cheese.

• Going on a Bear Hunt is a great song that reinforces positional words.

• Read books about shapes or positional words.

Measurement:

• Have your child roll a die and build a tower using the same number of blocks as the number shown on the cube.  Then you take a turn.  Ask your child, "Whose tower is bigger?"
• When having to take turns to do an activity, uses size comparisons to determine who goes first.  "The shortest person goes first today."  "The person with the longest arm span will go first."

• Use time words with your child. "We will go to the store after we eat lunch?"  or  "Grandma will pick you up tomorrow."

• During meal times, we often use the term more,  "Would you like more?"  Start using the word 'less' just as often.  "Do you want 3 crackers or less?" This is often a difficult concept for kindergartners to grasp.

• Read books using comparing words.

• Goldilocks and the Three Bears is a great story using comparison words.

Data & Probability:

• Play tic-tac-to with your child and have her tally the wins of each player.

• Take a family vote on what to eat for supper.  Have your child stack blocks to graph each person's vote and determine a winner.

• Using Trail Mix again, have your child sort the mix any way they choose and ask them to describe how they sorted them.

• Sing songs that emphasize categories, such as Old MacDonald's Farm.

Simply remember that we experience mathematical situations everyday.  

Simply share these experiences with your children and be amazed as they develop into a mathematician before your very eyes.

Sometimes We Just Need To Focus Our Lens!

I overheard a conversation today that I can't resist the temptation to reflect on.  Now I wasn't eavesdropping...okay maybe I was, but their conversation truly intrigued me.  I was first drawn in by the statement, "I went to preschool with [insert child's name] today."  Now I don't know if this was a mother, a grandmother, or an aunt for that matter, but her next comment hit me in the gut.
She looked at her eager listener [not me] and said...

"I'm not sure they ever teach at that school! Every time I visit, the children are ONLY playing."

Whoa!  From that point on, every other sound in the room was tuned out so that I could, for research purposes only, listen intently just in case the conversation might let me in on what key aspects of learning she was looking for.

To summarize, here is what she saw during her visit to her son's pre-kindergarten classroom...

• "He was digging through spaghetti noodles to find grapes."
• "He was running around the carpet playing 'Monster Mash' freeze."
• "He was wandering around the room wearing 'monster goggles' with colored lenses."

After hearing her description of the day, and thinking to myself, 'I hope she's talking about one of my classrooms because those are great lessons', I forced myself to take a moment of reflection and take off my teacher lenses.  

The words that she used did not exactly paint a conventional picture of learning, learning the way that she was probably taught.  I found myself wondering...'Did the teacher offer any kind of explanation for the learning that was embedded within those activities?'  

I truly believe that it is our role as educators to support the parents' role as the primary influence on their child's education.  In order to do this, we must communicate with parent's regarding how young children learn!

Post reflection, my gut was telling me to do something that I was not completely comfortable with.  I knew that I had to take this opportunity to 'let this lady borrow my teacher lenses.'  Somehow, I weaseled my way into the conversation and together, we began a conversation about children's learning that I wish I could have recorded and mass produced to all our parents.

As our conversation drew on, I realized that this woman did not need 'teacher lenses', she just needed to learn how to focus her own lens!!!  I explained that childhood is a time of learning and children learn from all they do, see and hear.  I helped her to see the importance of early childhood teachers providing activities that encourage active engagement that is essential for learning.  

A 15 minute conversation made all the difference to how she now viewed her child's learning experiences.  As we discussed the activities that she had observed, Sheila [I now knew her name] was immediately going home to tell her husband all that her son had learned at school today and her lens was focused and ready to watch for teachable moments with play!  Because she now knew that...

  

• He wasn't just "digging through spaghetti noodles to find grapes."

This activity not only reinforced his tactile perception and manual dexterity by sorting the grapes from the spaghetti without any visual cues, he was also participating in a sensory activity that would engage his senses in a learning experience that would stimulate brain development.  From the instant that he was born, he has been exploring his new world through his senses.  As he experiences new and different textures, smells, sights, sounds, and textures, more neural connections are made in his brain, and his brain becomes a rich network of connections that will help his development for the rest of his life.

• He wasn't just  "running around the carpet playing 'Monster Mash' freeze."

He was learning self regulation by using his auditory processing skills to determine when it was appropriate to run and when he had to stop.  Self regulation is a skill that will greatly influence his success in kindergarten.   He was doing all this while, using his spatial relational reasoning to manipulate his body in space and not run into any of his friends.

• He wasn't just  "wandering around the room wearing 'monster goggles' with colored lenses."

By wearing the colored lens goggles, he was encouraged to 'focus his lens' on the task at hand.  The teacher was asking them to find shapes in the environment.  By removing the added distraction of multi-colored items, the students were able to focus on the physical attributes of the shapes that surround their everyday environment.  Finding shapes in our environment, creates concrete examples for a task that can be quite an abstract concept.

So parents...I challenge you today to 'focus your lens' and discover what learning is occurring during your child's favorite activities.  

Please share your discoveries, we can learn a great deal from each other!

Can Play Dough Help My Child Be a Better Writer?

As parents, we are told not to compare our child to others because each child develops at their own pace.  Let's face it... that's easier said than done, especially with something as visible as their writing.  Have you ever found yourself asking these questions wondering if something is wrong:

• Why is my child only scribbling when others in his preschool class are writing their names?
• Why does my child write so big that his name can't fit on a single piece of paper?
• Why does my child write many of his letters backwards?

These are very common questions asked by parents of very typically developing writers.  

First of all let's revisit the statement, "...each child develops at their own pace."  This is true from birth.  When learning to walk, a baby progresses through many stages of development that strengthen his muscles in preparation for his first steps.  First a baby rolls and then sits on his own. The child slowly begins to crawl, which progresses to pulling up on things and strolling along them.  Until finally, they take that big step toward a loved one.  A parent never would expect them to take their first steps right after they had mastered sitting up.

The same holds true for our young writers.  See below, the developmental stages of writing that are typically represented in a classroom of pre-kindergartners.  It is important, as a parent, to know where your child is in this continuum so that you know how to appropriately support them as a learner.

Now let's revisit our questions from concerned parents.

Q:  Why is my child only scribbling when others in his preschool class are writing their names?

A:  Your child is in a typical stage of writing development for preschoolers.  To move to the next stage in the continuum, your child needs to develop strength and control in his fine motor muscles.  To strengthen these muscles provide the following materials for your child to explore with.

• play dough:  kneading play dough will strengthen the muscles that your child uses to grip and control a writing utensil.   (click here for some fabulous homemade play dough recipes)
• hole punches:  the repetitive squeezing motion of a hole punch will strengthen your child's muscles that are used to grip writing utensils.
• scissors: cutting objects other than paper such as straws, felt and string will promote the dexterity that your child will need to manipulate a writing utensil.
• broad tip markers:  the wider grip of these are easier to control and markers take less pressure to produce an effect on paper, making exploring more appealing.

Q:  Why does my child write so big that his name can't fit on a single piece of paper?

A:  Children that are merging from the Pre-Literate stages of writing into the Emergent Stages often have a tendency to write larger.  Larger strokes on a paper are easier to control than smaller, more precise strokes.  Now is NOT the time to try to constrain your child's writing to lined paper.  This is a time for free exploration of the movement of letters and transition from a gross motor movement of utilizing their entire arm for writing to practicing moving their fingers to control the movements of their writing utensil.

• Lacing cards:  using a pincer grasp to manipulate a small thread in and out of holes will promote dexterity in your child's fingers that will enable him to control the strokes of his writing utensil.
• Finger painting: gliding their fingers along the paint's slick surface is a fun way to practice the movement of shapes and letters.
• Crayola Pipsqueak markers: these small markers encourage the appropriate placement of your child's pincer grasp that will ensure more control while writing.

Q:  Why does my child write many of his letters backwards?

A:  As children begin to explore with environmental print and attempt to write what they see on paper, often times the written representation of what they see is a skewed version of the original.  Let's put their development into perspective.  This is their first attempt at taking something from their 3D world and representing it with a 2D expression.
Prior to their experiences with the written word, an object retained it's name independent of it's placement in space.  For instance, a cup is a cup whether it is sideways, upside down, or right side up.  With written print, this no longer holds true.  In fact, this transition can be quite confusing until the child has a solid understanding of directionality.  For some children, this is a concept that is not mastered until 6 years old.  So no worries, this too is developmentally appropriate.

Our role, as parents and educators, is simply to determine where our children are and scaffold their learning to the next level...not to make them run before they can crawl. 

Bringing the Spark back to Storytime

As an early childhood educator with a heart for literacy, I am inspired daily by the awe in a child’s eyes as they lose themselves in a simple storybook. As the pages are flipped, we naturally alter our voice to make magical characters come to life; seizing the attentions of even the squirmiest child and enrapturing their curiosity for the written word.

As you read my intro, maybe you’re asking yourself, “Have I ever seen that magic in the eyes of my child while reading?” If that look of complete engagement has been absent from your read alouds, try some of the tips below to put the spark back into storytime!

• Take a picture walk of the book prior to reading the story.

This activity teaches emerging readers that illustrations can be used to gain understanding of a story while captivating their attention immediately.

• Don’t be afraid to let loose of our own imagination by using your voice as a tool for engagement.

Yes, you can give voices to characters that make their personalities come alive, but even the slightest changes in voice inflection, speed, and volume through out the story, can create an atmosphere of suspense.

• Stop to engage him/her in making meaningful connections to their own experiences.

You may even prepare activities prior to the read aloud that children will be able to draw experiences from. Children draw on prior knowledge and experience to help them understand what they are reading and are thus able to use that knowledge to make personal connections.

• Stretch your child’s imagination by allowing him/her to make their own predictions for the climax of the story.

This activity brings us full circle from the picture walk. Students will now have to activate their prior knowledge and combine that with what they have comprehended thus far from the text in able to make an approximate prediction.

• Don’t hesitate to reread the same story multiple times.

A child can repeatedly experience a book just as you and I can watch a movie over and over again and find something new in the storyline each time. This is because each time we experience the story, we have more background knowledge and experiences to draw from, enabling us to make different connections to the storyline each time.

Remember that as your child's first and primary educator, you hold the key to shaping their perception of reading. You have the opportunity to foster a love for literacy in their hearts that will only continue to grow over the years. It is while on your lap, that your child may decide, “I love books.”, and from there the future is theirs for the taking.