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Math-rich baby and toddler environment
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Can your baby multiply?
Can your baby multiply?!!
Usually kids study multiplication around the age of seven or eight. But multiplication is one of the building blocks of math. This is similar to postponing, let's say, past and future tenses until the kid is seven. After all, they are more complicated than the present tense.
You can help your baby or young child multiply. Take pictures or write stories to the group when you do. It takes two simple steps to start.
Before doing math activities, always give kids time to free play with all the objects you are going to use. This may take hours with young ones, so plan accordingly. As Mick said at the live meeting, this is one of the best pieces of advice he got in this course so far. Kids may also need a bit of time with objects every time you take them out again.
STEP 1. ICONIC NUMBER
Find an object your kid absolutely adores.
A kid may love cats, cars, cartoon or book characters, particular toys. Named objects are better if the kid loves these particular ones: Garfield over a generic cat, or Putt-Putt over a generic car, and Fluffy over a generic three-headed dog. Find such loved object that has to do with a number from 3 to 5. For example, Garfield has 4 paws and Putt-Putt has 4 wheels. Prepare a toy or a paper cutout that allows you to touch that quantity separately. Not all pictures show all four wheels, for example.
This is now your iconic number. Do NOT count the paws or wheels "one, two, three, four" at any time during this activity. Counting is more complicated for kids than what we will do!
Now prepare three trays or plates with similar objects (or pictures) in them: the iconic number, two more, two fewer. Objects must relate to the character so you can do some pretend play. For example, you can prepare trays with 2, 4 and 6 hubcaps for Putt-Putt or 1, 3 and 5 collars for Fluffy.
Ask the kid which tray is right. Do NOT count. If the kid chooses the wrong tray, try the hubcaps on and pretend-play sadness: "Oh, there are not enough hubcaps! Putt-Putt is sad!" Do not be disappointed for real, just pretend-play in a fun, silly manner. Then reset everything as it was. If the kid chooses right, pretend-play a happy event, for example, Putt-Putt racing around happily.
You can play this with different iconic numbers. There are computer games that offer this task, but I am yet to find one I like, and they don't let you choose characters you kid loves, obviously.
The difficulty for the baby is not in determining the number, which is seamlessly built into every human brain. It is understanding the setup of the game, the idea of matching. A kid may spend literally less than a second choosing the right number. It takes a baby something like .3 seconds to subitize (instantly recognize numbers). It is much easier than counting. Do play around a bit, but don't delay the kid too much. If the game is clear, it's better to move on to multiplication.
STEP 2 MULTIPLY
Now you will need two copies of characters. Cartoons that have clones or families are especially good for this pretend play. Let's say you have two cars.
You will prepare trays with multiple sets in them. On the first tray, have a plate with four hubcaps. On the second, two plates with four hubcaps in each. On the third, three plates with four hubcaps in each.
Ask which tray to pick for your two cars. Roleplay the matching, as before.
Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
Make math your own, to make your own math.
I tried this a couple of times with Mark, but it didn't work (we played out a story about an astronaut who's gearing up for a space walk and is looking for his gloves). He did just fine with the iconic numbers part, but when I added a second astronaut and more trays with "gloves", he first picked the one with 2 gloves and then, when we asserted that it was not a correct tray, moved to the one with the three plates. I think he was too tired and distracted for the game since it was kind of late in the day. I'm going to try it again with something different though, maybe using robots and Lego blocks :)
Tried it again today. This time we played "Mark's birthday party" and he invited his plush toys for some tea with peanuts (so the setup was super easy). We decided that since Mark just turned 4, each "guest" will get 4 peanuts. First, I set up 3 saucers, one with 2 peanuts, one with 4 and one with 6 and asked to choose the right one. No problem there. Then Mark chose two friends to invite and went to get them from the toy basket. Which gave me enough time to set up the multiple sets of 1, 2 and 3 saucers with 4 peanuts in each. I asked Mark which set would we need to take so that all the guests will have enough peanuts. He chose the correct tray right away. Later I tried the same, but with 3 "guests" instead of 2. So my 3 sets of trays had 2, 3 and 4 saucers on them. Mark chose the tray with 4 saucers and when we roleplayed the matching and foudn out that we had an extra saucer, he simply went and got another "guest" instead of trying to make another estimate. From that point on he kept choosing the set with more saucers and simply bringing more toy friends.
Thank you for sharing the story! I love it because it highlights several important ideas.
"If at first you don't succeed, try and try again." It USUALLY takes 3-5 tries to get pretend play math going right, especially if you have not done it much before. Eventually, kids become great helpers in making things work.
"If math gave you lemons, make lemonade." Mark and Yelena not only incorporated "the mistake" into their roleplay, but also made a more complex and fun mathematical extension of the game! Instead of matching N plates, Mark is now matching N+1.
Congratulations on the successful multiplication activity, Yelena!
Nica and I tried this game with her favorite teddy bear and socks - but no success yet, at 6 months old. But I'll keep trying every few months- it'll be interesting to see when she gets the game. We did have a great time playing with the teddy and socks though! and covering the teddy's body with socks. I think she was trying to make a blanket out of them?
Megan, don't wait a few months :-) It takes much longer for babies to set up the game. When you try, model what to do:
- Show two trays with socks
- Roleplay thinking: "Hmmm, what should I pick?!"
- Pick the right one
- Hang socks on paws (quicker than putting them on)
- Roleplay MUCH DELIGHT
If the baby plays and picks the wrong one, roleplay sadness and confusion instead of joy. Don't really be sad, just clown around and pretend play - maybe fling the extra sock into space, or something else funny.
It probably takes 5-10 such roleplay sessions for the baby to figure out the game.
My boys (4 years and 1.5 years) helped make pancakes this morning...I thought of your multiplication activity (which is a fantastic idea and I have yet to try) as we doubled our recipe. We talked about how many half-teaspoons and quarter-cups it took to double (make 2 batches of pancakes). Not sure it sunk in but both boys enjoyed pouring ingredients and mixing batter :D
Check out the fractal pizza - maybe you can implement it with a pancake, too?
http://www.pataprogramming.com/2010/03/fractal-friday-another-fractal-pi...
Or fractal cookies!
http://boingboing.net/2008/04/10/howto-make-fractal-c.html
Kelli, doubling the size is fun for kids, as you mention! Thanks for the idea! And since there are two boys, each can pour one set and the result will come out double, automatically. You can exploit this for other doubling games, too.