LIGHT THINGS FLOAT ON WATER: WE LEARNT BY DOING

It has been very  long since I blogged but yesterday my boy and I did something which got me so excited that I cannot help but share it with all of  you. Summer is around and Utkarsh is busy playing with his neighborhood pals.  The other day when I stepped out, they all rushed to me excitedly to tell that they made an experiment. They told me that they turned our faucets outside and found that if flowed into the drain. I know it doesn't sound  so much like an experiment but the fact that they discovered something by doing was very exciting. It reminded me that science is best learned by doing. I wanted to do something with Utkarsh and this is what we did.

I wanted Utkarsh to understand that light things will float on water. I asked Utkarsh to collect things like sticks, leaves, feather, small rocks, marbles and anything else that he found interesting. He wore his cap and stepped out. He brought a treasure trove with him but it did need a lot of cajoling to bring him back  inside the house. I kept a container of water. I asked him to drop a leave first. Then we dropped a stick, feather and a piece of paper. It all floated on top of water. Then we dropped a rock. However hard he tried, the rock kept going down. He was trying to see if the rock would float if he tried putting it in the container from a different angle. He gave up and then we dropped a marble and even a lego block. All of them obviously went down. Once we did this, we sat down to discuss. I gave him the leaf and rock. I asked him which he thought is lighter. He first told me that he actually was so strong that both were light for him. I had to explain that we are comparing the two and I understood well that he was indeed very strong and smart.  So finally we agree that the leaf was lighter than the rock. We kept comparing one light and one heavy object. Finally we arrived at the conclusion that lighter things will float and heavy things will come down.

Utkarsh was proud of this scientific discovery and Mamma was happy that she could be a part of this "experiment".

LET US MAKE SHAPES

Many of you might be working on teaching shapes to your children.  This particular blog is appropriate 
for children between 3-5 years. By now, most of them can recognize shapes. I am trying to develop 
greater understanding in Utkarsh about the concept of squares and rectangles. I have always wondered if he
really understood the difference between the two. 

My aim right now is to make him understand that square has all sides of equal size and that a rectangle 
has opposite sides of equal size. For this, I wanted to work on

• The concept of opposite 

• The concept of equal

I gave Utkarsh two pairs of blocks.  One pair of block is longer than the other pair of block. First, I 
encouraged him to set aside blocks of equal length. 

Then I asked him to place them opposite to one 
another.  We made a rectangle with these. Needless to say, he needed some help. Though we keep using the term equal and opposite on a daily basis, it didn't mean that Utkarsh could immediately set aside equal blocks. Even more complex for him was to understand the concept of opposite sides. Also even though our children might be recognizing shapes very well, this activity takes this comprehension to  a higher level. Here they are translating their abstract understanding into concrete learning. 

Next we made a square.  For this I gave two pair of blocks which are all of equal length. We discussed
how all sides are equal.

Encourage your child to make different shapes.  Encourage them to count the sides, place equal sides opposite to one another, make one side longer than other and other similar activities.

You can do this activity with pencil and crayons, straws or even used popsicle sticks.

Another ancillary activity that we can do when working with blocks is  to make unequal towers. 
Encourage your child to make them equal or to make one tower taller or shorter than other.

ENGAGE YOUR TODDLER DURING THIS LONG WEEKEND TRIP

The July 4^th long weekend is here and I know that all my friends are busy packing bags and are  ready to hit the road….. Being a mother of  a 4 year old, I must say that every vacation is a welcome break from the mundane routine of everyday life but are you also one of those who dread the prospect of keeping  a super active toddler suitably happy and engaged during the journey? I have been thinking about this for a while and I wanted to share a couple of ideas that you can try on your trip this time….

One of the most important things and this I learnt from a dear friend who visited me this year was to start early morning on trips.  Believe me, either the child will sleep in the early part of the trip or during the day in the trip. Imagine a well slept child who is yearning to play and expend energy being tied up on his car seat…that surely is recipe for disaster JJ

 So friends start early and let your child sleep for some time during the trip....believe me you will not have to work very hard to put them to sleep, they will do so by themselves.

Road trips are excellent  opportunity for learning/teaching.  If your child is beginning to read, keep their books in the car. If they are beginning to write, keep pen and paper. If they are doing maths, you can make activity sheets for them to do. If you thought that your child would do these easily, let me assure you they won’t. How about using some negotiation skills here JJ...I usually tell Utkarsh that I will give him a video to watch or that he will get his car or anything new that you have for them in the car, once they are done with the activity.

We play a lot of verbal games during road trips, especially those which emphasize phonics and spellings. How about playing a guessing game  around animals? Let me give you an example. You can ask your child to guess an animal that begins with  “h”. If your child is just beginning with phonics, you can give them greater clues like the sounds that the animals make or how they look. These kind of activities help your child to not only master phonics but also encourage greater communication skills. You get to discuss more about each animal. These games can be suitably modified. I just randomly ask my son to guess a thing that begins with “b” which helps us to go from one place to another or a thing that begins with “h” which we wear during summers. Use your imagination. See what you want your child to learn and master. Modify these games accordingly.

 You will be surprised how much your child can learn during a trip. Do you have anything that you want your child to master in particular? Do you want them to learn the names of animal babies or do you want them to learn their number better? You have their undivided attention to yourself. Make the most of it!! With little bit of persuasion, you can ask them to learn all of these. We usually ask our son to say his numbers in the car during the trip or tell us names of animal babies and similar things.

I highly recommend making an audio CD of their favorite songs. I think children enjoy listening to music on trips just as we do.

Encourage your child to look out of the window and keep conversations going around what you see. There is so much of science, geography, arithmetic and vocabulary that can be learnt during all these trips. There are animals to be watched and counted, trucks to be pointed, colors to be learnt, scenery to be described,   and so on.

My son is beginning to show a great deal of interest in maps. How about finding maps during trips? Can you imagine their excitement when you hand them maps and just ask them to look in the map and tell you directions…. The caveat here, of course is :Just don’t take their navigation skills too seriously JJ

I have read at many places and experienced it too, that it is not a bad idea to buy your child some new  inexpensive toys during the trip.  I would emphasize on the "inexpensive" because you want to keep a couple of toys during the trip that you can hand out periodically.

I know that you moms would always do this but make sure that the child is comfortably seated and that they are not feeling too hot or too cold. They are usually happy and much easier to deal with when they are comfortable. Give snacks at regular intervals. Remember trips are not the best time to enforce healthy eating habits…This is break time for them too…so go ahead and indulge them.

Don’t feel guilty about Ipad and showing movies. It is unrealistic to think that our children will not ask for them and personally I don’t see any harm in doing so. The trick is to combine this with conversations, games and learning during the trip.

I hope you have a great trip and don't forget to share what you guys do during the road trips....

TEACHING “MORE THAN, LESS THAN”: ONE MORE EARLY MATHEMATICAL  CONCEPT

           My son and I are working on learning a new mathematical concept and I thought it would be interesting to share it with you all.We are working to develop an understanding of concepts like "more than, greater than, less than" and other similar concept. 

           Often when we ask my son  if he wants 6 cookies or 3  cookies or whether he wants 4 cars or 5 cars, his answers are inconsistent.  We feel that he answers randomly and doesn’t clearly understand which numbers is greater. He gets it right sometime but  I suspect that it is often a lucky guess than a well thought out reply. As with everything else that we adults know, I think we tend to take it for granted that our children naturally understand the concept of "greater than or more than and less than". My experience with my son, however, reminded me that he needs to be taught this concept and he may not magically learn it, though I wish he would JJ

• A few weeks ago I came across this interesting book in the library. It is a book called “ More than, Less than” by Joanne Mattern. It has very interesting pictures to spur the interest of children in this concept and also gives us Moms interesting ideas on how to teach this concept to them.

• At the first stage, I would suggest that you  take numbers out of the learning equation. Give your child two groups of objects and ask them which is "more or greater." For example, you could give them 4 apples and 8 oranges . Ask them which is more or greater. Try to introduce them to both the words: more and greater.  Also you are also introducing them to different fruits.  With older kids, you could show them different sets of toys to work on this concept.   Here I want to introduce a word of caution. Just because your child understands which is more or greater, it doesn't  mean that they understand that  the other thing is naturally less. I suggest that you first teach the concept of  "more or greater" and then tackle the concept of "less than". 
• Once you feel that your child is beginning to understand the concept of more or greater, let us get numbers into the equation.  At this stage, you can again show them two sets of objects  and ask them which is greater.  We won’t stop here, though. Ask them to count the objects and write it on a piece of paper. For instance, let them count the 4 apples and write down 4 on a sheet of paper. Next ask them to count the oranges and write down 8 on papers. Now ask them  which is greater. They may tell you the right number or they may falter. There is still no way for us to really know whether they are guessing or correctly understanding the concept. Once my son tells me the answer, I again validate it by explaining that there are more oranges and hence 8 is greater than 4. My feeling is that as that if we do this repeatedly over a few days,  the children tend to  recognize and understand the pattern that greater is a number that follows a given number. I realized that at this point, I didn't want  to confuse my son  by bringing in the concept of recognizing  'lesser than" in terms of numbers. I made a basic activity sheet to work on this concept. I am still learning how I can insert printable worksheets. Till then, please bear with me JJ I am attaching a scanned copy of the worksheet for you to see. I always feel that when we make these worksheets rather than printing them, our children tend to believe that we did something extra special for them. The smile on their face is priceless, Try it!!!

• One way for us to reinforce this concept , is by giving our child cut out numbers like 3, 5 and 1  or any other random combination. Give your child, the number 3 and ask them which is greater than 3. Is it  5 or 1. I think this activity is best tried after  we have already worked on this concept for a little while. 
• Another thing that I recently did was to make a number line from 1 to 10.  I think it is easy for children to see which number comes after which number when they see a number line. 

I have just recently started working on this concept with my son. I may come across more ways to work on this concept and will share them with you.As always, share your views on how we can work on this concept or anything else that you would like to share.

WE ARE LEARNING ABOUT SEASONS

U (my son) and I talk a lot about weather and seasons these days. This is one of the earliest lessons of science that we can teach our children. It is a lesson we carry for the rest of our life. I feel it is wonderful that  we get to teach our little ones their first science lesson before their kindergarten teacher does JJ.

I would always talk to my son about the weather when we stepped out of the house.  Your little one is listening to you, believe me !! Start early. Every day talk to your child about how the day is. Is it sunny, windy, rainy or cold. In this way, we are encouraging our children to observe their surrounding. We are helping them to build their vocabulary to describe and understand weather and seasons.

U is almost 4 now and I felt that I need to take our conversations about weather into more concrete learning.  Here are a couple of things that we are doing and I encourage you to do as well.

• Right now, we are using a book called “ Watching the Seasons” by Edana Eckart. The reason I picked this book was that, as the name suggests, the book contains vivid pictures of the four seasons.  U and I discussed the pictures and I explained to him the different seasons. Encourage your child to describe each picture  and then explain to them the corresponding season.  I picked this book from the library. Similar books must be available at your library and you will also find them on Amazon. 

• This is another interesting activity that you can do. Give your child your own pictures taken in different weathers. I suggest that you collect pictures taken in all four weathers. These would be, a pictures taken during winter when you are all covered up or some picture taken in the snow, the second picture  could  be of you guys  during spring with flowers and greenery,  the third picture could be of fall with bare trees or colored leaves on trees and the fourth picture of summer spent on beaches or just in summery clothes. Stick  them on your wall. Discuss what your child sees in each picture and explain the corresponding season.
• Fill a box with things like shorts, sunscreen, umbrella, raincoats, flip flops, mittens, sweaters . Discuss which is used in which season.

As with everything else, reinforcing the concept on a daily basis is critical. When you step out and see flowers everywhere, encourage your child to observe the phenomenon and discuss how we see flowers in springs everywhere. Now when you head to the beach during summer, don’t forget to discuss with your child about summer and how we get to eat lots of ice cream and play in water JJ .

NONE  IS  ZERO

These days, during story time at the  library , the lovely librarians make it a point to read book or do finger play around the concept of reverse counting. Simply put, we do stuff like “ five little monkeys jumping on a bed” or “ five apples on a tree” , removing one item at a time and thus encouraging the toddlers to count reverse. Right at the end, we finish with “none”. I have been wanting to teach my son, the concept of zero. I was trying to figure  out how to teach this concept.  I tried this method and it worked for us.

• Give your child 2-3 cars or candies or any other thing that  they like. Remove one item at a time. Encourage them to count backwards. When you remove all the items, ask your child how many are left? Explain that when there is none left, we call it zero.
•  Reinforce the concept of zero on a daily basis. If you give two cookies or few oranges or anything that can be counted, ask your child when it is done, how many are they left with. They will get around understanding that zero represents the absence of anything.

This was a big deal for us.  U (that is how m going to refer to my son, henceforth in the blog 
J) loves showing off that he knows zero now. Try teaching this to your toddler who is learning number. 

SORT & MATCH, TWIST & PRESS WHILE MOMMY IS  BUSY IN KITCHEN

     Many of my friends who have  crawling and walking infants keep telling me how their little ones are happiest rummaging through vessels and pots in the kitchen. I can almost see the exasperated sigh from moms going through that phase and wide smile from those like myself, who can now only remember those lovely daysJ.

 Some  of you don’t want to let their little ones into the kitchen and have very good reasons to do so. I appreciate your choice. I, however, always encouraged my son to enter and spend time in the kitchen. In fact, I feel that we have both learnt a lot of lessons working together in the kitchen. The next couple of activities that I am going to discuss in this blog, are child friendly and will keep your little ones engaged in the kitchen, while you finish your cooking and other chores. Of course, you may also choose to sit with them and work on these activities. These activities are ideal for infants from 1 years to may be about 2 and half years of age. I don’t think these activities would interest them after that but then these little ones have the uncanny ability to prove all our big theories wrong!!!

• I would give my son cups of different sizes and encourage him to stack them. We would do that with pots too. Surely there would be pots of different sizes in your kitchen and you can encourage your child to stack them.
•  Another interesting thing that you can do with your child is to  give them pots and lids. Encourage your child to match the lid to the correct pot. This is a tough perceptual activity. They have to estimate the size and match the lid to the pot. Of course, some of them are really smart. They keenly observes us when we are working in the kitchen and already know which lid goes on which pot J. Another similar activity, I often did was to give storage containers of different shapes like some being circular and some being square and encourage my son match the lid.  Storage containers also come in different colors. Encourage your child to match the lid to the correct container. I would suggest you to increase the complexity gradually. So if you want the child to recognize and differentiate colors then give different colors of cups or containers and ask them to match. If you want them to learn shapes then focus on it.  You can combine the two as they grow older. Jean Piaget, who gave to us the most famous theory of cognitive development in children, has said that  thinking at this stage is “centered” on only one aspect of a situation and thus it is often difficult for them to simultaneously focus on two aspects like color and shape. Try to understand why your child is matching, sorting or stacking in a particular manner. You will be surprised to find that they are actively thinking and not doing these activities randomly. There is definitely a method in their madness…we just need the eyes to observe and appreciate them J.
•  Another interesting sorting activity you can do with your little one in the kitchen is to give me them a few variety of fruits and vegetables. Then you encourage them to sort them. You can discuss the name of the vegetable or fruits, discuss colors with them or just count them. They are very young and please don’t worry it they don’t recall the names or colors correctly.  When they sort, they may not sort according to color always. You will be surprised that they sometime sort by shape. They make keep the tomatoes and potatoes together and put the okras and beans together. They may put the apples and tomatoes together. Yes it is amazing to see how the precocious minds are brimming with unusual possibilities. If we pay attention, I think we will all appreciate that they display creative thinking and it is we adults who think  and act in very predictive manner.
• These activities are all great to facilitate sensory-motor development in children. Also these are excellent concept building  activities for young children. As they grow older, they will build on this knowledge . For instance, once they recognize to perceptually differentiate between a square and circle or between colors, it is easier to teach them to name them correctly.  

I particulary recommend these activities because they are inexpensive and require almost no preperation in adavance. These activities are excellent ways  to spend happy time with your child in and around the kitchen, which is the place that most mystifies them at this tender age. They see their moms in this  part of the house so much and role playing comes early to them. Any day care that you visit will have a kitchen set up in all rooms. They know how much the little ones want to be thereJ