Math-rich baby and toddler environment

Maria,

I had not thought about symbol as a math concept. In fact, I don't get much past counting, adding, fractions, time, etc when I think about math concepts. Maybe add money and patterns to that list. Is there a good resource or list of early math concepts somewhere online that I could reference?

As for symbol, the first idea that came to my mind would be to create a series of cards of common symbols that the child sees (such as the woman and man symbol for bathroom, the arrow for play on electronic devices, a red light, a green light, etc). Then to make it interesting you could add some symbols that you and the child create together. These cards could be used to "write" and "read" symbol sentences or to play a game where mom writes a symbol sentence for the child to read and act out.

I also love the angles idea!

Such fun.

Pam

Anything we think deeply about (through art, for instance) leaves its mark, and makes later work with related concepts easier. I'm teaching Calc II this semester, and we're finding the area between two curves. To do this, we evaluate an expression at the endpoints. But if the shape is the same on both sides of the y-axis, we can just look at the positive side (the arithmetic is much easier) and double our answer. Symmetry helps us make our work easier.

I don't know if this will make any sense to people who haven't dealt with calculus...

Figuring out what's the same in different things is a very valuable skill for math. You could play games with that sort of idea, too.

I just thought about this - blocks! Blocks seem to be perfect toys for learning math. Kids build all sorts of structures with blocks, but they also use blocks as symbols - a triangular block is a roof, a cylinder is a rocket, a yellow cube - Wall-E, etc, etc.

That is a really cool idea. I'd also like to know how old your daughter is.

btw: this really goes to show that you can have fun with kids just by simply writing on a piece of paper. :)

very cool idea. I'll see if I can think of some ideas to add to that.

Just print out two of these:

Then let each player draw in the "ships". Then start guessing the coordinates on the plane (kind of like bingo if you think about it).

In the example on the right on that image "G4" was a hit so it is marked with an "X". G5 was a miss so you put one slash in there.

It is a mixture of guessing and strategy. The person to sink all of the ships wins.

I was thinking of a few variations which would have a better theme:
- each player should draw something using some number of squares and the game ends when someone guesses what the opponent drew (perhaps before all of the fields are found)

I can't believe how long a "little sketch" took, but here it goes:

Another idea would be to play battleship with one large "worm" (instead of ships) which the other player would need to guess the "head and tail" (whatever the beginning+end square's coordinates would be).

Here is a challenge: I'd like for the parents/educators to use this basic principle (of a paper and pen w/ grid system) and show their kid(s) an example then have the kids make their own game and then have them play against one another. For the educators, they could have the kids vote on what they think the best game is.

I've seen kids get together in teams having been tasked with finding an optimal solution for rearranging desks, and then have teams come together and vote as to what the best solution was. It was very cool seeing them work together and come up with great solutions using geometry (they didn't know that). I'm sure the same ideas apply here.

I bet you it is a lot of fun and it will get the kids thinking for sure.

Nope... I used embed code and I don't see it. So here's the link...
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1M2TWd-U-niLyJwNyy-WRmG-SBXJl2tA...

I tried something new with my son today which worked out well. I put him on a billiard table and then we played with the balls on the table for a while. Once he had familiarized himself with them, then I rolled them to him and he put them in a pocket and counted (by himself- I didn't say anything). It was really interesting seeing how he handled certain situations (like when the pocket was full and he went to another pocket and started to count from the beginning). Seems like a really neat game to play that works on: motor skills- hand/eye coordination, "order" (what goes where), and of course counting.

Mick's story reminded me of a simple game we played a few days ago. It was basically just all about rolling ping-pong balls. We set it up in a hallway (I closed all the doors except for the one into Mark's room). He sat in his doorway and rolled the balls so that they'd hit the baseboards. I'd try to catch them and then we'd switch. The interesting part was observing how Mark was figuring out the angles. After a few tries he figured out a way to send the ball across the hallway in such a way that it'd bounce against the back wall and roll right back to Mark. I wish we had a pool table though!

One thing that I'm not sure about is- is it really a good idea to reward children with something (like fake currency that they can use to buy things)? I've been contemplating this for a while. Wouldn't children always assume that they will be rewarded for good behavior? What happens when they realize that there are not always rewards for doing a good thing? Would they merely stop all together? "Why should I do ____ if I'm not going to see a reward out of it?". I've seen behavior like that before with children- it seemed like a real backlash coming from a reward based system, how do you prevent something like that from happening? I think that once my son is in school that I might just take him out for something special with him at the end of the week if he got good "grades" in school (I think they give out gold stars or something like that for the younger children). This doesn't address issues at home and the finer details or what he did or did not do. Has anyone employed a system like this and their children are now older (like 8-9) or has anyone tried the opposite (of not giving out rewards and just treating it as "normal behavior")? Has it worked for you?

I am so excited! I feel like I have something to contribute, albeit a small victory! (That said, sorry I haven't been more involved, but I have been enjoying some of the interaction in this class!)

In addition to using some of the suggestions mentioned here, we are still working on counting. On Sunday, Hailey (2) rattled off "One, two, three" on her own, without repeating after me. It hasn't happened since, but it was a victory at the time.

Fast forward to today. H is no longer in a crib, but a toddler bed, so she can leave when she is finished napping or sleeping. She usually comes to the door, knocks and calls for mama or daddy. Sometimes we will stand on the other side and knock back on the door.

I heard her stirring from her nap and knew that the knocking was soon to follow. When I heard her shuffle her feet to the door, I began knocking before she did. Tap, tap tap. Then I heard her tap back, three times. I thought, "huh," and tapped four times. She did the same. And the same with five, and back to three.

So yeah, some of it had to do with rhythm, but I do think that she is beginning to count, in her head! YAY!