I’ll never forget the first moment when I actually witnessed, first hand, a child constructing knowledge right in front of me. This was long before I had children of my own and had the privilege of watching the construction of knowledge unfold before my very eyes every single day. I was an assistant kindergarten teacher […]
Happy New Year to All of My Math at Home friends. Have you been discussing the concept of the “new year” with your kids? I hope so. I actually remember when a teacher said to me when I was really young, “I’ll see you next year.” This was at the end of December and I […]
On Monday, I wrote about the Chinese puzzle “Tangrams.” This website allows children to complete puzzles with the Tangram shapes on the screen. There are easy puzzles and harder puzzles. I am spatially-challenged so even the easiest puzzles are too hard for me. However, there are some children who have really strong spatial skills who […]
During the month of January, we will be looking at the Business of Child Care. I can’t tell you how frequently I have young people come to my office telling me that they want to open their own child care center. Many want to open home-based centers, while others are intent on establishing a bigger […]
A Tangram is a Chinese puzzle that has 7 shapes. They are always the same, in every set. There are: • Two large right triangles • One medium-sized right triangle • Two small right triangles • One small square • One parallelogram According to Gwen Dewar, PhD. in Parenting Science (2009) Arranged correctly, the shapes […]
No, this is not about food (well it might be, sometimes). It is just a little tidbit of information to keep you thinking about math all day long. These will appear from time to time….just to keep everyone excited about math.
Tuesdays will be dedicated to investigating teaching, how we do what we do with young children. Hopefully, this will be a forum for home-based teachers to talk to other teachers in the field in order to get feedback and support about how they approach teaching mathematical concepts to the children they serve. In addition, I […]
Math manipulatives can be ANYTHING that children move, or manipulate, when solving math-related problems. They are most often hand-held items, small enough to be configured into visual representations of math concepts. They can be store bought, teacher-made or found. As children physically move math manipulatives, it broadens their learning from watching and listening to solving […]
Starting next week, the Math at Home Blog is going on a little break. I will be reposting some of the descriptive posts from when we began, but there won’t be any new posts until January 7th. I hope that you all have a peaceful and restorative winter break. For most of you that means […]
Did you know that on the Math at Home website, we have developed dozens of lesson plans about math? Each of the lesson plans has an accompanying Parent Letter that describes the lesson and provides examples of how parents can support the math concepts at home. The letters are in an easy-to-use format so that […]