Going on a number or shape hunt. Ideas 33 & 34

More ideas for when the children are at home from school during this pandemic from Creative Star's 50 Maths Outdoors cards.

While we can still go out for a walk with children see what numbers they can find on their walk, where are they, do they recognise them or can they just point them out as numbers?  It all depends on the age of the child, a preschool child might recognise 'their' number (3 or 4) and this is good way to build up their number recognition. Teach them the number of their house as well, it will make the number 'real' to them. 

If you are out for a walk, maybe take a piece of paper with the numbers 0-10 on it and see how many they can mark off, then you can add more with each walk. Do they see any numbers that are the same? I can still remember my excitement when I realised there were numbers on the cars that I passed on a walk when I was a young child. use your phone to take photos of the numbers and make up a number line when you get home. 

Older children could of course add the numbers up that they see and find out which car number plate totals the biggest number. What is the biggest number seen when out walking. Are there odd numbers on one side of your street/road and even on the other? 

Shapes are another thing you could look for out on a walk - there will be 2D and 3D shapes, you could create a tally chart to see which shape is the most popular in your area.  recognising road signs are usually in a shape and why they are different shapes for various messages could be an interesting observation. Why are some circles and some circles? 

Of course numbers and shapes can be combined, like speed limit signs or house number plaques. 

When back home, you could make numbers shapes out of materials in the garden. Draw shapes or numbers on the ground with chalk and ask children to hop to the circle, run to the triangle, jump to number 5 etc. 

I am not expecting parents to be teachers at this strange time but you can have a lot of fun exploring your environment and seeing how your child learns and remembers new information. This is a time to really enjoy how a young child uses their whole environment to absorb new facts and make sense of them. It is not about learning numbers by rote but recognising that numbers have an actual purpose in everyday life and are real, not just something to be learned in a maths lesson.

Have fun!

Learning at home - Can you find me....?

Gathering some stones and painting them during this time will provide endless resources. 

Here is another idea for those stuck at home with young children during this time of Covid-19. I don't want parents to stress about 'teaching' their young children, rather just enjoy this time with them and watching how they interact with their environment. 

One activity I saw when visiting a kindergarten in Sweden impressed me a lot and this is one that can easily be replicated at home. The children were asked to find 4 objects, 3 the same and 1 different and the children's level of thinking was excellent, way beyond 3 are green and 1 is blue. You can read about that experience here: 

https://nosuchthingasbadweather.blogspot.com/2018/03/education-matters-erasmus-plus-visit-to.html

But let's start simple: ask your child to find you 3 things, you decide are they to be the same colour, size, shape, type etc. Once they are confident in this activity you can mix it up a little, can you find me 2 big animals and 1 small animal, 1 long sock and 2 short socks. The sky is the limit with this, you can ask them to find anything or just stick to toys. 
3 is an easy number to start with, children are used to hearing about things in groups of 3 - bears, little pigs, billy goats, owl babies etc. Once your child is confident about 3 you can start asking for 4, 5 etc. Stretch the activity out by asking can you hop and find me, can you crawl and find me. 

You can take this activity outdoors and ask them to find flowers, leaves, shapes etc. if you have a tablet or allow them your phone, let them go find the objects and take a photo and bring it back to you. 

Same but different is another great way to extend this activity, get young children to really look at the items they have collected, ask them what is the same, what is different. Young children are really good at this, much better than adults as they notice the tiniest of details. This is great way to get children thinking about sets and how objects are gathered together by their sameness or difference. Initially you, as the adult might have to give them language to describe their objects e.g. 'Oh so you brought me 2 tiny wooden things and 1 very long thing made out of wool' etc. 

Bottle Babies are brilliant for this activity. 

While you can get out for a walk, ask them to find things that are the same on their walk, as they get more used to this activity you can ask 'why are they the same', allowing the child to tell you why they think they are the same, don't say 'no they are not' if they don't quite get it, just step back a bit and keep giving them reasons why they are the same so they will begin to see it for themselves and be able to say why. 

All this is giving your child an opportunity to develop their listening skills; how many was I asked to get, memory skills; can they remember the number/type as they search around the room or house, language skills and mathematical skills. 

At meal times use this as an activity to get children to help set the table, how many people are there for dinner? How many forks, knives etc. will we need? Can you get me 3 forks and 3 knives and let them set the table. 

The possibilities for this activity are endless and I am sure children will come up with lots of new ways to play this. 

Here is a wonderful website with lots of great ideas for helping young children grasp mathematical concepts:
https://earlymath.erikson.edu/why-early-math-everyday-math/big-ideas-learning-early-mathematics/

Maths in the early years.

Like most people I have had a love/hate relationship with maths my whole life, I loved it at primary because of particular teachers but quickly I came to hate it at secondary school and in fact was so bad at it, I only passed my 'O' level after being coached outside school. I actually developed a fear of maths and would break out in a cold sweat when asked to do mental maths etc. and my P.G.C.E year did nothing to convince me that maths was a subject I could do or enjoy. However luckily since I began teaching in nursery I have fallen in love with maths as subject again. 

If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have said that young children can learn their key academic skills in nursery through play by carefully chosen material to allow them to just develop skills like knowing colours, shapes, numbers, letters etc. But now I have revised this belief and it has been a journey that has coincided with many different events all coming together to help me realise that we need to actually teach key skills in a playful way with a particular emphasis on maths.

I have made some great on line friendships with other early years educators and some of them have helped me begin to realise that I do have a role as a teacher rather a mere facilitator in in classroom. I have been so fortunate to meet up with some of these friends and see them interact with young children, either in their own setting or with children in another setting. Unnur Henrys, a friend and colleague who teaches in Iceland has taught me so much about maths acquisition. I have watched her playing with dice in the forest with children as young as 2 who were excited to match items to the right number. Unnur has inspired me to have large dice in my playground to allow children to explore maths in their play. Lesley Romanoff, another friend and colleague in the U.S had shown me how smaller dice could be incorporated into everyday play inside and used as another 'loose part'. Before seeing them in her setting I would not have thought to have dice in my nursery classroom. Now I can't imagine not having them.

In 2018 our school began 2 new Erasmus Plus projects, a KA2 maths based project with preschools in Turkey, Finland, Croatia, Greece and Denmark  and a KA2 staff based CPD project. During the latter I got the opportunity to do a course in Iceland with Kristín and Sarah from Smart Teachers Play More that opened my eyes to the possibilities of how to teach core academic skills in playful manner. In our KA2 I have been fortunate to learn many new maths & science games and activities from my partners, you can read about this project here: http://nosuchthingasbadweather.blogspot.com/2019/10/erasmus-plus-ka2-finland.html

Sharing some maths activities with children in our partner school in Croatia. 

So, for the past 18 months we have been running 40 minute Play to Learn More sessions with the children once a week, they take part in small groups of 6 or 7 at a time. It has really opened my eyes to the fact that I need to teach key skills and allow children time to revisit these skills again and again in order to prefect them. The main classroom and playground are still set up in such a way as to allow the children to explore materials and transfer skills learned during the teaching session to their play sessions but we are purposely planning what exact skills we ant to teach during our PTLM sessions. 

PTLM sessions on colour and number. 

We were fortunate to have Juliet Robertson from Creative Star Learning Company deliver training last year locally and she introduced me to the owners of the Hungarian ten frame and since then I have found this resource invaluable in helping the children to begin the see the 'numberness' of 10. This particular resource seems easier for younger children than the traditional square ten frame. 

The Hungarian ten frame in action during play sessions indoors and outdoors. 

I was really interested to read the latest paper from The East London Research School this week that has shown that early maths has to be taught and can not just be simply picked up during play in preschools.  This paper can be read here: https://researchschool.org.uk/eastlondon/news/early-maths-easy-as-one-two-three/
In particular this sentence stood out for me "As a result, Davenall agrees with Sue Gifford’s earlier finding that children are 'unlikely to learn about number through independent play ... a laissez-faire approach to children learning maths in the 'secret garden of play' does not work. Opportunities may be there, but children will not necessarily take advantage of them'"

So I will continue to flood my classroom and playground with maths resources as before but I will consciously teach the children how to use them first before putting them out, some will continue to explore them in a mathematical way whilst others will simply play with them, that is ok but I'll know that I have at least given them all the skills to be a mathematician and to love, enjoy and be excited by maths. 

Erasmus Plus KA2 Finland

Our school is involved in a two year Erasmus Plus KA2 Project 'European New Generation' with preschools from Denmark, Turkey, Croatia, Finland and Greece. You can read some more about the project in this post: http://nosuchthingasbadweather.blogspot.com/2019/03/maths-everywhere.html

So far we have all met up in Turkey and N.Ireland and then this past week we had our third meeting in Finland. Our project is all about STEM/STEAM in the early years curriculum and at some of the meetings the partners share some games for the children in the host school to enjoy playing. This has been a great way for us as educators to gain some new ideas and gather lots of new innovative maths lessons. 

 This project has helped us as staff in the nursery and Foundation Stage classes to realise how to ensure that maths is integrated into all aspects of learning and not just seen as a stand alone subject - this is more of an issue for colleagues in the primary when curriculum subjects are very clearly divided up. In nursery and preschool, in general, we tend to teach subjects across the board all day long and realise that maths is everywhere and not just something to be taught for an hour a day.

In Finland we got to take part in some outdoor games with a small group of children and share some maths activities indoors with them too. We also spent time in the forest watching the children take part in maths/ICT games, this was followed by having lunch around the fire.

As I watched some of my partners in the forest it made me realise how far we as a nursery have come on our outdoor journey and how we as a staff have developed our outdoor curriculum over the past 10 years. When I visited Norway in 2008 and took part in a job shadow in an outdoor preschool, I spent a lot of time asking 'Can they do that, should they be up there, are they allowed to do that?' as is was so different from our playground and outdoor play. This time I was very comfortable in the forest and almost blasé about the adventurous, risky play that we saw but I could see some of my other partners were amazed by it and it made us realise that we have benefitted so much from being involved in European projects since 2004.

Sometimes you enter a project with one aim but end up with a completely different one or you get something out of a partnership that you never expected and of course life long friendships are made. 

Our next meeting is in Croatia and then we have 3 more left before the project comes to an end. The children and staff in Windmill can only but benefit from all the shared learning going on from across Europe. 
of course the idea that we are now being dragged out of the EU and that the possibilities of the amazing Erasmus opportunities may be lost for out students and staff makes me so angry but in the meantime I will continue to take part in projects and learn from my colleagues. 

To end on a more positive note, our school was recently awarded the International School Award by the British Council.

New Experiences are Good.

Climbing up the slope using a rope is always a popular activity.

We are very fortunate to have two wooded areas within school grounds that were planted by pupils, parents and staff over 5 years ago. The nursery has the sole use of one of them, called Bear Woods and it is just above the nursery accessible by a path that runs around the front of the building. 
This week we decided to introduce our new class of 28 3 - 4 years olds to this space. So far the children have been staying for 2 hours in separate groups of 15 & 18 and today was the last day before the groups merge into one big class. This proved the ideal opportunity to take the children up in the smaller groups to allow them time and space to explore Bear Woods and learn some of the ground rules. 

There aren't many rules for when we go to Bear Woods but the ones we do have are important: 
A grown up goes first through the nursery gate and the children must follow behind until they reach the first white line. 
The children can run ahead once we reach the first white line but have to stop at the second white line. 
Then when coming back the rules are the same: 
A grown up first through the gate of Bear Woods until we reach the first white line.
Run ahead but stop at the second white line. 

The children can just run ahead on the path or go through a willow tunnel parents created last year during a maintenance morning for the wooded areas. 

The willow tunnel - you can see the nursery playground below.

Once we get to Bear Woods the children have a small snack and when finished eating they can go play. This small area has really become a proper wood in the past couple of years and it is wonderful to see the children explore this space and enjoy just being outdoors with very little resources. 
The area we have is on a slope and it really challenges the children at first to navigate walking up and down the gradient & sometimes they enjoy just rolling down the hill.
Today as we arrived one child commented "Woah this is very steep, we need to concentrate guys!"

An adult usually goes to stand at the second white line just to make sure the children stop( as the path is out into the main school car park) but today I was so impressed when both groups stopped without anyone having to remind them. 

 

I can't wait to have a year of fun and adventures in our our little piece of nature.

Maths Everywhere!

This year our school is involved in a 2 year Erasmus Plus KA2 Project called 'European New Generation' with school sin Greece, Turkey, Finland, Denmark and Croatia. The theme of our project is maths, science and the arts: the STEAM subjects as it is know referred to. 

Izmir, Turkey. 

We started the project off with a teaching event in Izmir, Turkey in December when 3 of our staff travelled there to meet up with all the other schools and began to plan out the 2 year project. We will host a visit form the partners in April.
This project has come at the perfect time for our nursery and foundation Stage classes as all the staff in these classes have also had the opportunity to take part in some Erasmus Plus training through a KA1 Project with 'Smart Teachers Play More' in both Alicante and Reykjavik. This course emphasises getting children moving whilst introducing new key concepts like colour, shape, number and also literacy.

Iceland.

Spain.

The children are really embracing all the opportunities to have lots of new maths activities and are particularly drawn to playing with the bigger dice and finding numbers in their environment. They love looking for shapes as well and I just drew some shapes on the playground and made a simple dice with the shapes on it so they could make up their own game. 

Numbers 

Rolling dice and finding the same number of objects.

Sorting by colour. 

Finding shapes. 

Making shapes.

Polydron, Dice & Poker Chips - Take 2!

I wrote a post back in June about how adding some dice to our Polydron had made it become a much more versatile resource than it already was - I love Polydron and the plan for this year is to invest in more of it. 

Today one child decided to build on the floor with it rather than up on the Tuff Spot, he began by laying all the squares down, others then joined him snaking out into the hallway. They all worked really well together and there was lot son chat about what they building, what they could add etc. When the squares were exhausted they began to add the triangles to the outside, then the Pentagons and these allowed the 'snake' to go around the corner and then they decided to add the dice and finally the poker chips. 

This activity kept this group of children busy and engaged for up to 2 hours and made me realise that it is important to allow the children the opportunity to build on a flat surface too. As we need the tables on dinner days, perhaps on a lunch day we could have it outside and remove some of the tables to all the children to build on this scale again in the classroom.

Here is the last post I did on the Polydron & dice: https://nosuchthingasbadweather.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/dice-what-great-addition.html