talking math

Finger Counting

/ Amy / 1 Comment

How do you count on your fingers?

Here’s how I do it:

I think it’s a pretty normal way to count on fingers, and when I asked a group of adults to count on their fingers, most of them did either this, or started with their thumb.

But then I asked my 6-year-old how he counts on his fingers and this is what he showed me:

I had to have him do it for me a few times because it was so strange! It starts off normal enough, but then when he moves from two to three, instead of just holding up the next finger, he puts down his first finger and holds up a completely different set of fingers!

I have lots and lots of thoughts about this, but for now I’ll just leave this here as an example of the weird and wonderful things that happen when you ask kids to show you how they think.

Math versus Literacy?

/ Amy / Leave a comment

numbers and lettersOne possible concern about focusing on mathematics at an early age is that too much focus on mathematics could take time away from learning crucial language and literacy skills. There’s an incredible body of research on the importance of early literacy, and no parent, caregiver, or educator would want to detract from a child’s literacy and language development.

But recently, as I’ve been digging in to the research on early mathematics learning, I came across the intriguing finding: Early mathematics skills may be a better predictor of later reading achievement than early reading skills. For example, a large study of the effects of various school-entry skills on later achievement showed that “early math skills have the greatest predictive power, followed by reading and then attention skills” for both boys and girls, and for children from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds (1). Another study on the effects of a high quality, intensive preschool math curriculum on children’s later language and literacy abilities showed that children who were taught from the math curriculum performed as well as the control group on some skills, and better on most skills (2).

These studies aren’t alone. The evidence is not perfect and doesn’t yet address why the link between early math and later literacy might exist. But I find the idea that strong, early math exposure could also boost a child’s language and literacy development to be fascinating.

And, honestly, it’s not all that surprising to me. Talking with your child about numbers or shapes or measurement is still talking to your child. Asking your child how they thought about a simple addition problem gives them opportunity to articulate their thought processes. Making sense of the world through quantities and spatial reasoning is still making sense of the world. Bringing math talk and math play into a child’s world, in ways that are fun and challenging and build on their natural curiosity, provides them with even more and broader contexts for making use of language and interpreting symbols and recalling facts and ideas from memory and linking ideas.

References

(1) G. J. Duncan et al., School readiness and later achievement. Developmental Psychology 43, 1428 (2007).

(2) J. Sarama, A. Lange, D. H. Clements, C. B. Wolfe, The impacts of an early mathematics curriculum on emerging literacy and language. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 27, 489 (2012).

Scavenge for Quantity

/ Amy / Leave a comment

The beginning of the college semester has kept me extra busy for a couple weeks, but I’m back. And I have a game this time that can be adapted for a very wide variety of ages – a scavenger hunt!

One way to help your child to internalize mathematical thinking is to open their eyes to the quantities around them. As parents, we help provide our children ways to see the world from an early age. We name objects, identify colors, describe what we’re doing. A child doesn’t necessarily see the color blue on their own – they see blue because adults point blue out to them (listen to this totally fascinating Radiolab podcast about the color blue). We point out big and little, noisy and quiet, dark and bright – we help show them which characteristics are worth noticing.

Quantity is also a characteristic. So many things in our world come in quantities, but since kids don’t tune in naturally to the characteristic “how many,” adults can help by pointing it out. I’m not talking about learning to count – I’m talking about learning to see quantity as an attribute, something we can recognize, describe, and use to characterize parts of our world, just like color. Just as Monkey’s t-shirt and the playground equipment in the picture below, although entirely different in other ways, share the attribute “gray,” the flower petals and the dots on the dice below the photograph share the attribute “five.”

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flower dice

A scavenger hunt for quantities can help your child become accustomed to seeing quantity as an attribute. There are all sorts of ways to do a quantity scavenger hunt. Here are three:

  1. Open Scavenge: Pick a room in the house and work together to find as many quantities as possible. You might choose the kitchen and find that there are two salt/pepper shakers, six chairs around the table, four drawers beneath the counter, three slats on the back of the chair, two towels on the front of the oven, and so on and so on. This can be played one-on-one with a single child or cooperatively with two or more children. Some children may enjoy labeling quantities with sticky notes or a label maker.
  2. Number Challenge: Give your child (or children) a paper labeled with the numbers 1-12, or a set of sticky notes labeled 1-12. Then roam throughout the house and try to find a quantity for every number. With multiple players, everyone can have their own set, the rule being that no two people can choose the same set of objects for their number. Because some numbers will be much harder than others (how many things come in sets of 11?*), you may wish to eliminate hard numbers, set a time limit, or simply play for fun with the expectation that you might not find everything.
  3. Quantity Match: Can be played with a parent and child, or with two children. Have one player find a quantity (four shelves, for example). The other player then has to find something different, but with the same quantity (four pillows on the couch!). Then switch places. Repeating quantities is okay (and even repeating sets of objects for very young children).

Again, this is really easy to adapt, and it’s easy to involve multiple members of the family – including younger and older children. Have fun with it!

scavenge

And as a side note, it’s never to early to start helping your child notice quantity. With very young children, you can point out any quantity but especially two – there are all sorts of twos in a baby or toddler’s life! Two ears, two hands, two feet… This morning as I was changing 16-month-old Monkey out of his pajamas, I counted “one…” as I pulled one foot out of the footie, and as I reached for his second foot he responded with, “dooh!” A few more repetitions convinced me that it wasn’t just coincidence – he’s picked up on the “one…two!” count he’s been hearing from me, and I wasn’t even really thinking about it. Way to make your math mama proud, Monkey!

 

* Look! 11 slats on the shoe rack!

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Taking Turns: From Quizzing to Playing

/ Amy / 2 Comments

A lot of doing math with young kids involves asking questions. Sometimes the hard part is knowing what questions to ask and when to ask them, and I hope this blog can provide you with plenty of ideas.

But sometimes I find that the real challenge is taking these questions and turning them into a conversation. I mean, asking questions is a great start to igniting conversation. “What shape is that?” is a lot more likely to give your child reason to interact with you than, “Look! There’s a triangle!” once your child is old enough to meaningfully respond. (Or even before – I ask Monkey questions all the time, and even though the response is often jabber, he’s still learning patterns of conversation, it it feels like I’m now talking with him, not just at him.)

But once you ask a question and get an answer, how to you keep the conversation going? How do you keep it feeling like you’re playing rather than quizzing? How do you keep it interesting and engaging?

One very simple and very versatile tool is to take turns asking questions. This is a fantastic tool because it works with a wide variety of ages, with any mathematical idea (and even with non-mathematical conversations!).

asking questions

Going back to shapes, imagine three different conversational outcomes of a parent on a walk with their child.

Conversation 1:

Parent: [points at Yield sign] Look! There’s a triangle!

Child: [looks]

Conversation 2:

Parent: [points at Yield sign] What shape is that?

Child: Triangle!

Parent: Good job!* [points at wheel on a car] What shape is this?

Child: Circle!

Parent: How about….that! [points at window on a house]

Child: Square!

etc.

Conversation 3:

Parent: [points at Yield sign] What shape is that?

Child: Triangle!

Parent: Good job! Now you ask me one.

Child: [points at stop sign] What’s that!

Parent: That’s an octagon. Can you say that?

Child: Octagon.

Parent: Good! My turn?

Child: Yeah!

etc.

So what’s better about outcome 3? For one, the child is much more empowered in this conversation. The child can choose the focus of conversation. The child can communicate to the parent more easily what they are interested in or curious about. They might maintain interest longer, because the conversation is a game rather than a quiz. And thinking about what kinds of questions fit in the game involves a much higher level of thinking than just answering the questions that you choose.

Now, kids are totally unpredictable, which means that sometimes this (like any tool) might work fantastically…and sometimes it might not work out so well. Kids don’t always play the game you choose.  And sometimes a kid won’t play by the rules (but sometimes their rules can take you to interesting places). And sometimes a kid will ask you a really hard question, and when this happens it’s not a fail – it’s a total success! What if your child were to ask you about the shape of a tree? What would you say? What if they ask what a million times a gajillion is? Or what number comes before zero? These are great conversation starters, and even if you don’t know an answer, you have an opportunity to model thinking and curiosity and how adults go about figuring out something they don’t know.

What other tools do you use to engage your kids in mathematical conversation?

 

* P.S. A great question to ask at times like these, although it’s not the purpose of this post, is “How do you know?” Sometimes this might be beyond your child, but go ahead and ask it anyway. See what happens!