The Hurricane Song

I know, a song about hurricanes doesn't seem to have much to do with teaching math, but math and science are closely related, and there is a lot of math involved in meteorology, and certainly in manhandling data that gives those blasted hurricane models.

Hurricanes are in the news, especially if you live on the East Coast of the USA or nearby.
I recently wrote a post called Math Out Loud that talks about that very thing for young children.
This morning I was reminded again about how easily we remember song lyrics.

I heard Have a Cigar, by Pink Floyd, on the radio this morning and was surprised to see that I remembered not only every word to the song, but nearly every inflection nuance and most of the guitar solo. I haven't heard that song in fifteen years, and yet I retained it so well.

It started me to thinking about how much I loved educational songs as a child, and how much my own children enjoy them. Schoolhouse Rock taught me a lot, and my own kids got pretty hooked on a few Animaniacs songs. They now know all the presidents and can sing their way through listing every nation on Earth.

Here's a song about hurricanes that really tickled me, and not because Hurricane Ike missed is by a breeze or two. I just like it.
Check this out:
http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/educational_videos/educational_videos_hurricane_song.html

Telling Time

Teaching a child to tell time takes time. Unless you have one of those rare children who gets it on the first try, you will probably need many times exposing your child to telling time in a variety of ways.

First, there are clocks everywhere a child looks. Clocks on walls, clocks on bedsides, clocks on bank signs, clocks on DVD players, in cars, and clocks called "Watches" worn on wrists.

This can be confusing to a child who sees not only different colored clock faces, different style of numbers and hands -- some with only dots where numbers should be, some with letters where numbers should be, and some with a red second hand, or a black second hand, or with no second hand at all.

Then there is the digital clock face and the analog clock face. Some have "hands" that don't look like hands pointing to two different numbers at once, and some just have numbers separated by dots.

Then there is the oral option of time telling, where you tell what time it is by saying words that they may not understand, such as "three" and "four" and "twenty to" and "a quarter after."

Telling time can be confusing. I will be posting a few different posts on how to help your child learn to tell time, with analog and digital clocks, to the hour, half hour, quarter hour, and ten and five minute intervals.

Calendar for Children

Unlike adults, young children don't mind seeing time pass. Perhaps it is because they don't have much of a concept of life and death and ageing that they can get excited about marking a big red "X" across each day of the week on a calendar. At any rate, they like it, especially if they are counting down to something exciting like a birthday or other special event.

Children need to learn about the days of the weeks, and the months in a year, so it is a good idea to hang a yearly calendar where your child has access to it. It is a better idea to give your child a special calendar just for her.

This provides your child with a visual schedule of the days of the week, the months in a year, an understanding of when seasons occur, and the general passing of time.

You can use the calendar to mark special events, regular weekly events, and even keep a record of the weather. One way to do this is to use stickers or small stamps. I suppose some of you techy parents out there have ways to print stickers, but I like these Calendots from Organized Planet.

Give her the daily job of checking the calendar each morning to tell you what day it is and report any activities you may have planned. And, at the end of the day, have her put the big red "X" on the square. Remember, children love routine.

Buy a Scale and a Tape Measure

No, you're not fat. It's just a good way to help your child learn about measurement.

You can teach about measurement during the course of your days and have a lot of fun doing it. Your child may even think he is playing games with some cool toys.

Start by giving your child a set of measuring cups and spoons to play with. He can play at the sink measuring water into a dishpan. Put bubbles in and make it even more fun. You can give your child access to a sand or rice table, or sandbox or even the beach! Filling and dumping measuring cups and spoons is the beginning of learning about weight and volume.

When your is around three or four, or can recognize numbers, you can give him a ruler or tape measure to play with, supervised of course. Measure things together. Carrots, fingers, cloth, wood, fruit, toys, couches, rooms...you name it.

With this you can introduce, as a matter of course during regular conversation, concepts such as big and little, short and long, near and far, few and many, empty and full, more and less.
Without even making a big deal about it, you will be using math terms every day.

When your child gets a little older, you can expand on volume and weight. Weigh yourselves at the grocery store, with and without groceries in hand. Find different scales at garage sales or on eBay, and set them up in an area of the house. Your child will spend more time than you would ever expect measuring things on a scale. Give her two items and tell her to tell you which one weighs more. Have her do it on a few different types of scales.

You can also ask her to measure things with a tape measure to see which are taller, or wider, or more. When she is old enough to count above ten, introduce inches, feet, yards, or metric measurements. Then you can ask her to measure the dimensions of a room or other objects on her own.

Enjoy these "games." You may be developing a future master carpenter, cabinet maker, chef, tailor, seamstress, or sail maker, not to mention accountant or astronomer!

Recognizing Numbers

Once children can count, a natural step is to learn to recognize numbers. Eventually they will connect that the symbol for the number three means "three things."
Here is how to help them make that connection:

Number recognition: Point out and name numbers on everyday things, such as signs, receipts, houses, buses and anything else you can find that has numbers on it.

Play plenty of simple board games. Candyland can be played with children as young as three years old, and involves counting colored squares to moove a gamepiece. For variety, the game Trouble can be played by five year olds and involves recognizing the actual number and moving a game piece the number stated.

You can also play card games that require counting and recognizing numbers concurrently, such as Crazy Eights, Go Fish, Dominoes, and Uno.

Reading together can be one of the best ways to reinforce number recognition. Start, when your child is a baby, with simple cardboard counting books, and move on to more challenging books as your child matures. There are many number recognition books available at bookstores and libraries. Have your child casually count with you when you are reading. Say, "Let's count the baby chicks, " and take her little finger and touch it to each object while you are counting.

It is a painless way to teach and learn.

Classification Skills

Classification skills, or sorting skills, is another one of those cross-training skills that, when developed, help children in math, reading, and general logical thought process development.

It is one of the most important skills for creating a real thinker. When children begin to classify objects (matchbox cars), sounds ( loud/soft, man-made/machine), flavors (salty, bitter, sweet) , or concepts ( real/make-believe) into categories according to traits they have in common, they begin to develop the ability to make connections. This is the precursor to logical thinking, and the ability to make predictions about the world around them.

You can help develop this skill.

First, help your child sort simple objects. Matchbox cars can go into a different pile than matchbox trucks, color laundry can go into a different pile than whites, plastic things can be differentiated from metal things, junk mail from regular mail, hard things from soft things, big things from little things. There is no end to simple object classification.


When the child is old enough to trust with nostril-sized things, have fun with M&Ms, raisins and grapes, buttons, nails and screws and bolts.


Then start asking your children some questions: Are these things alike or different? How are they alike? How are they different?


Play Uno with them when they are old enough. Uno matches wither by color or by number and is a wonderful game for teaching classification.

Take your child grocery shopping. Name the vegetables in the vegetable isle, then name the dairy foods in the dairy aisle. ON the ride home, ask your child to tell you names of different things you saw, and where they belong.

"We saw milk."
"Milk! Yes we did. Where was the milk?"
"In the berry aisle"
"No, in the dairy aisle. What else was in the dairy aisle?"

When you go to the fabric store (If you don't go, I would suggest a trip just for fun), take time to go through different fabrics, describing their texture, soft, smooth, rough, fluffy, itchy, see through, dark , light, solid, pattern. But a few remnants of fabric to take home and cut into squares for keeping in a "texture box."

Because the aim of this blog is to demonstrate ways to do "sneaky teaching" I suggest keeping things fun at all times in the early years. Direct lessons help, but informal opportunities for sorting and classification abound during the course of a typical day.

Sequencing

What is sequencing and why is it important to children?
Sequencing is the skill of arranging items or events in a particular order.

It is an important skill which has applications in reading, math, and telling time, all things we want our children to be able to do with ease.

How do you introduce your young child to this skill? It's not difficult, and it can be a lot of fun.
One way to do it is to play pattern games. Set up things that are long and short, dried spaghetti sticks, for example, and call them what they are. Point to each item and say,"Long, short, long, short, long...." and your child should pipe up with, "Short!" when you point to the next item.

Do this with colored things, such as red and green apples when you are putting away groceries.
Get some beads and string and make a simple two-color pattern, and have your child copy the pattern. When you are playing legos, have your child copy your color pattern, and then copy one that your child makes up.

If your child likes to do worksheets, print out some free pattern coloring worksheets from www.Printable-Worksheets.com for him to color.

Or tell a simple a story, and have your child tell the story back using, "First, next, next, and last"
statements.

Good sequencing skills can greatly boost a child's reading and math abilities, and you can easily work on this at home during play. Your child need not ever know he is "working."