I received this note this morning from the Children’s Defense Fund… Please read and forward. We urgently need you to make a call for children today. Decisions made during the lame duck session of Congress will have an effect on children and our nation for decades to come. With 1 in 5 children living in […]

Why do we use rulers? Where did the inch come from? Why is a foot 12 inches? Isn’t that random? Standard units of measure have their place in the larger world. They are defined, agreed upon, adopted, and used so that human beings can know precisely the “measure” of a physical quantity. Wouldn’t it be […]

If you don’t have any pattern blocks in your center just yet, the children can play with them virtually using this website. It is fairly simple to use; just click on the shape you want and drop it on the paper. Once there, children can drag the shapes around to make geometric designs. Some of […]

Thanks to my friend and colleague Carrie Nepstad for posting this link. What is the CRC? Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on November 20, 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is a multilateral human rights treaty that promotes the rights of all children worldwide. The CRC recognizes all children’s […]

I love these two pictures.   This little boy was trying to figure out if his two towers of pegs were the same height. It was really hard because they were so long that they were bending and curving, so their actual lengths were not readily apparent. His teacher helped him by holding the base […]

Pattern blocks come in all sorts of sets. There are beginner sets for younger children (I really like these), and there are larger sets for older children. They usually have small and large triangles, small and large squares, a rhombus or two, a few trapezoids, and some hexagons. They most often come in a variety […]

Have you ever asked a 3 year old how old they think you are? The often say really funny things like, “You are 100 years old,” or “You are really, really old.” It is funny when small children say it, less funny when one of my adult students says it. Age is an interesting concept […]

In August I posted an entry about sesamestreet.org which is cool, interactive website for young children. I love (and have loved for years) the Sesame Street puppets. When I was three-years-old, Sesame Street made its debut on PBS, which in Chicago is Channel 11. Before that, we had Ray Rayner, Bozo’s Circus, and Mr. Green […]

On Monday, I had the pleasure of watching one of my student teachers complete a lesson plan about missing numbers with the children in her classroom. She was very well-prepared by creating worksheets with large numbers written in circles with several numbers missing. She then had stickers with the missing numbers on them. I didn’t […]

Height is probably one of the first ways we explore measurement with young children. Words like “shorter” and “taller” already exist in a young child’s vocabulary. How “tall” someone is visual and easily seen. Children are very interested in themselves, so conversations about how “big” or “tall” they are is engaging to them. When I […]