February 2022
Welcome to EFM's February Newsletter!
Reading + Math!
Reading's Poor Cousin: "It's okay that you're bad at reading, I never liked reading either." It's unthinkable that someone would say this about reading, but it's said all the time about math. In early education, many see math as the neglected poor cousin of reading. We've all heard public service announcements that urge you to read with your child, but have you ever heard one that urged you to do math with your child? Many adults feel anxious, inadequate, or even hatred when it comes to math, so they avoid it whenever possible. I have heard it said that early math education programs are twenty years behind where early reading programs are. This should be changed!
Math and Reading Together: Education studies, as well as common sense, show that early math education is every bit as vital to a child's long term success as early reading. Early math education for families, daycares, PreK's, and K's should be done alongside early reading. As reading programs get more comfortable with math, they will realize how easy and natural it is to do the two subjects together. The direct family connections that make a reading program successful are exactly what is needed to make an early math program successful — so let's leverage the hard work of one to make both programs flourish!
We're here to help: If you know of a reading program that is missing a math component, please send us their contact information and we'll follow up!
New Activities to Enjoy!
This month we chose some game activities from EDC's Young Mathematicians program. They have many excellent resources in addition to their wide assortment of games, and they supply research to back up their good work.
Today's collection of activities all involve identifying properties of objects. They range from simple matching of objects, to finding ways to group objects with common properties, to finding patterns made from looking at properties of the objects. They all fall somewhere between the beginning of EFM Chapter 2 to about the end of Chapter 4.
Shape Bingo
This is the traditional game of Bingo played with cards that have shapes drawn on them.
Make lots of cards on pieces of paper that have drawings of colored shapes - circles, equilateral triangles, squares, rectangles, kites, parallelograms, hexagons, octagons, and other shapes you want your child to practice. Shuffle the cards and place them face up for each player in a 3 by 3, 4 by 4, or 5 by 5 grid. Make sure you have lots of cards so there are enough to make the Bingo boards and also have a substantial draw pile.
Play proceeds by turning over the top card of the draw pile one at a time. Each player then chooses one of the matching cards (if any) in their bingo board to turn face down. The first player to have a complete row, column, or diagonal of face down cards wins and gets to yell "Bingo!"
Feel For Shapes
Have a container or bag that you can't see into, and have a collection of shapes (two of each kind). Put one of each kind in the bag and put the others on the table to be seen and played with. Here are four activities to use to develop an ability to describe and identify.
These games can be made easier or harder by using a smaller or larger group of shapes, as well as using simpler or more complex shapes (such as a kite, a diamond, or a concave shape).
1) Pick up two shapes from the table and ask the child to say what is the same and different about these two shapes. If they are a square and an equilateral triangle, the child might say that they are the same in that they have straight sides that are all the same length, but they are different in that one has three sides and the other has four.
2) Pick out a shape on the table and challenge your child to find the same shape in the bag without looking.
3) One of you grabs a shape in the container without looking and starts describing it. The other person gets one guess per clue, and tries to find the correct shape on the table. The challenge is to guess correctly in as few tries as possible.
4) You can put any objects, such as toys or household items, you want in the container. This is then played like (3) only there are no shapes on the table to match against.
The Mystery Rule
Collect a group of shapes or objects. One of you separates them into two piles according to some unspoken rule. Example rules are: four-sided shapes, shapes with straight sides, and red and blue shapes. The challenge for the other person is to determine the rule that was used to do the separating.
This can also be done in steps, one object at a time. One by one the objects are taken from the big pile and put in the special group or the other group. The other person gets one guess after each placement. The challenge is to guess the rule in as few steps as possible.
Make it From Memory & Same Rule Different Stuff
These two activities blend together. Both of them involve having a child discover and then repeat a given pattern. Start by having a large collection of shapes, shape cards, blocks, or other materials that have several copies of the same thing. For both of these activities, one person creates a pattern and puts it on the table.
In Make it From Memory, the pattern creator covers up the pattern with a paper or cloth and asks the other person to come over. Then, uncover the pattern, give the person a few seconds to look at it, cover it up again, and challenge them to make an exact copy of it from memory. When the pattern has been copied, uncover the original and compare the two. Discuss which features were important and how the person went about remembering the pattern.
In Same Rule Different Stuff, the challenge is to do the same thing as in Make it From Memory, only now the other person is challenged to copy the form of the pattern, not the exact pattern. For example, fork-fork-spoon-fork-fork-spoon-fork-fork-spoon could be matched with square square triangle square square triangle square square triangle or A A B A A B A A B.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them my way. I would enjoy the opportunity to chat with you. Also, if you are interested in collaborating with us or supporting us in any fashion, I would love to talk with you about ways we can work together.
Chris Wright
February 18, 2022
chris@kitchentablemath.com