Math-rich baby and toddler environment

This is just a draft. The syllabus will change depending on the needs and interests of participants.

Week 1: Strew more math!

• Decorating the house with math
• Use your math words: indoor graffiti
• Activity boxes, play bags, lapbooks: all ready to go
• Mimsy toys
• Beyond the fridge door: capturing and displaying child's work
• Tracking baby and toddler's attention and matching the rhythms

Week 2: Content focus - subitize and unitize

• Subitizing
• Intrinsic quantities: @@ is for eyes, !!!!! is for fingers...
• Intrinsic multiplication
• Baby fractals
• Historic and modern manipulatives

Week 3: Beautiful math

• Field trips, photography
• Math in nature
• Math in culture
• Decorate your house with math
• Quick, spontaneous video and image search games

Week 4: Content focus - functions and change

• Sorting and seriating
• Patterning
• Function machines
• Composition, inverse
• Iteration, cycle

Week 5: Useful math

• Baby signs, better toddler communication
• Safety through better cause-effect explorations
• Switch of perspectives, lessening ego-centrism
• Logic and terrible twos
• Storytelling and mathematics
• "Alice in Wonderland" approach: celebrating mistakes and silliness
• Don't stand in the way of necessary games: expeditions, collections, scavenger hunt, dress-up, webs, roleplay

Week 6: Content focus - signs and symbols

• The three bear gradient
• Supporting private, family symbols
• Gestures and other "1000 languages of children"
• Figural vs. abstract: tough choice?