As an early childhood educator I have learned that young children enjoy creating learning items for their classroom environment. The children I have worked with loved creating books, art and games for the classroom. I found that one great way to include literacy with learning math was having children create a math board game using […]
Mealtime with a young child can be trying for parents, teachers, caregivers and children! Children can be passionate about what they love to eat and what they dislike. In fact, mealtime can be dreadful for parents and other adults in a child’s life if the child will not eat what has been made or will […]
When playing games, preschool children typically believe that there will be a winner and a loser at the end of the game. I often hear the phrases “I win!” or “You lose!!” when observing children involved in a multiple-player game. The competitiveness and desire to “be the winner” can overshadow the objectives of playing the […]
In the last blog, I talked about children moving from representing buildings from the neighborhood to designing their own building, representing that building with unit blocks, and sketching a re-designed version of what they built with blocks. Once they were done with this process, we wanted them to take some time and reflect on what […]
In the last couple of blogs, I talked about children having the opportunity to represent buildings from the neighborhood using different materials. Children were also able to experience the buildings in different forms: seeing the building in person on a walk, reflecting on the photos of the buildings, constructing the buildings with table blocks and […]
In the last blog, I talked about the first step of our building project which was going on a neighborhood walk and sketching a building, concentrating on a specific detail such as number of windows, stairs or the kind of roof that the building had (pitched versus flat). Children had the opportunity to work with […]
As a preschool teacher, I’ve always had a bit of difficulty teaching math or using a lot of math language in the classroom. This slowly changed as a result of attending math professional development cohorts and changing my teaching practices to use math language when children were using specific materials such as magna-tiles, blocks, Legos […]
This week I thought we could look at two videos. The first is less than a minute and it focuses on 4 children, all under three years of age, playing at the water table. The table is set up with some interesting materials and the children are pretty engaged. Pay special attention to the ways […]
Last week I wrote about the importance of impartial and accurate observations of children. Teachers of young children need to systematically use observation as a part of their daily practice in order to plan for appropriate and engaging learning opportunities, to set up the environment so it is both challenging and safe, to collaborate with […]
For the past 6 years, I have been involved in one way or another in the Math at Home Project; initially as the primary blogger, later as the designer and one of the authors of the professional development series …. and most recently as the coordinator of the Guest Bloggers. Each of these roles has […]