LEARNING “ FRONT and BACK”, “ UP and DOWN”, “ TOP, MIDDLE and BOTTOM” JJ

Yesterday when Utkarsh was reading a book, we came across a very interesting phrase, "rear of the bus". I explained to Utkarsh that “rear” means “back (of the bus)”. I asked him to quickly bring a car to me. When I said "car", Utkarsh's eyes widened and he dashed across the room to get me his favorite car; out the zillion that he has stored in his toy box. I asked him to show me the back of the car. He did and I explained that this is also called the rear. I also asked him to show me the front of the car then, which thankfully he did without any big fuss JJ

This incident brought back an interesting memory to me. This happened to me a couple of months back. Utkarsh had a book in his hand and he suddenly, as if the sole purpose was to get my attention, said hurriedly and in almost indecipherable tone “ Front of the book”, turned the book around and said “Back of the book”.  Well you might be thinking, that this is nothing out of the ordinary and your smart kids have been doing this for a long while now…..Well Good Job then….For me this was a big deal because I had not taught him this or at least I don’t recall having taught him that except cursory mention of the terms. I realized that he had learnt it in his class.

That is when it dawned on me that though I had taught my 3 year old alphabets and numbers, I had not bothered to teach him something as banal but extremely critical,  such as the concept of “ front and back”.  I realized later, that some of these concepts are basic conceptual bricks which we take for granted but are not as obvious to our tiny ones. So my friends who have toddlers around 2 years of age, this is a good time to start  talking about things like “ front and back”, “up and down”, “ top and bottom” .  The term “middle” or “ between” is a little harder but you can try them too. My son is beginning to understand the concept of  “between” just now but then I started a little late on this. Please don’t grow frustrated if the little one doesn’t immediately grasp the concept because eventually they will J. As we begin to  discuss these concepts more frequently with children,  they develop  clarity and firm understanding. And yes, this is also a wonderful way of augmenting their budding vocabulary.

I have a few quick and easy suggestions on how you can teach these concepts:

•  Show the front and back of the books to illustrate the concept
• Use the body to show front and back
•  Show animals and discuss with your child which they think is the front and back part of the animal . This is a good way also to teach them about “tails” in animals.
• Take your kid into their favorite part of  the house, Kitchen J, and show them stacked shelves. Teach them concepts like top, bottom and middle.
• My son has a car carrier truck. We often discussed “top and bottom” on that.
•  You can make activity sheets with simple pen and paper, where you make a few (ideally three) circles or squares or triangles or whatever shape you desire and ask your child to color the top , middle and bottom in different colors.  I will try to upload a  picture of this in a day or two…I am still struggling to learn all the features on the blog site

There are many inexpensive examples all around us. I am sure you all will find many interesting ways to teach these concepts to your kids. When we read books with our kids, it is a good idea to use the pictures in them to illustrate many of these concepts…And yes, every time you get into the car, don’t forget to ask them them to point to you the “front and back” of the car.

I want to share an interesting book I found on sequencing which I think is more appropriate for kids around 4 years of age…So will discuss it in another post

Thanks for reading me patiently and as always leave comments on what you think J