Math at Home

There are so many ways that math can be included in day to day life. Teachable moments are all around us. Counting fingers and toes is a simple way to get to twenty. Add more people and the numbers increase. It's easy to go from there to counting by fives or tens. Find parts of the body that come in pairs. Math is all around us! What math activities do you do with your children?

MATH AT HOME

We hear a lot these days about preparing children for literacy before they go to school.

Parents understand the importance of reading to their children from an early age, getting them excited about the world of books.

You can hardly find a preschool aged child who can't say the alphabet, recognize some key letters ("That says Stop!"), or attempt to print their names.

Equally important to academic success, however, is laying the foundations for understanding math, but this is an area often overlooked.

Now, lest you be tempted to dash out and get some flashcards or purchase a cute math computer game, let me suggest that your daily life with kids offers more than enough math experiences to get them well started.

Indeed, higher math concepts are embedded in simple interactions. Real life experiences make math concepts come alive in ways that flash cards never could.

Even youngest toddlers are casually exposed to the idea of number when you give them two crackers--one for each hand, something every toddler loves—-and count them as you do.

Even sharing becomes easier when you give the child a number of objects and ask her to give half of them to her brother.

Older preschoolers learn to count the number of forks and napkins needed when they set the table; an added bonus is discovering the concept of one-to-one correspondence when they learn to match place settings to chairs.

Counting objects helps children get through errands in the car-—"Let's see how many stoplights on the way to the doctor's office" or "Why don't you count the red cars we pass, and I'll count the blue ones."

Using math talk as part of regular conversation helps children understand concepts of comparison. "Do you need more Cheerios? Here I'll make two piles. Which one is bigger, and which is smaller? Can you make the piles the same?" And so on.

The family height records—-ours are on the sun porch doorway—-help children absorb ideas about size, measurement, and comparison, leading to addition and subtraction as we try to interpret how much each child grew this year.

Calendars are perfect props for math ideas. First, they have lots of numbers, so kids can get familiar with the sequence and appearance of numbers.

Then, they have the capacity to introduce simple subtraction. "How many days left until we go to Grandma's? Yesterday it was six. Let's count and see how many today."

When my children were small, we used to decorate our table with paper chains, with one link to count each day until an anticipated event, like a birthday. We made a ceremony of removing a link each day, and math was being absorbed as well.

Cooking is a complex activity, involving both literacy and math skills. Measuring ingredients helps practice counting again, as well as introduces new math terms, such a half a cup, and one-quarter teaspoon.

Before the cooking begins, trips to the grocery store allow more rehearsal of math skills: "Please choose four oranges for us, and then we will have to get one gallon of milk. The gallon is the biggest container. Which container looks like the biggest one?" Estimating is another important foundational skill.

One last household activity that forms a basis for later math understanding is sorting things—-socks as we fold laundry, similar toys to put away, like shapes to fit inside each other in the pot cupboard, and so on.

You may benefit by wonderfully tidy desk drawers when you ask your youngster to separate all the paper clips, rubber bands, pencils, and markers into separate containers. Classification is a basic math understanding.

Math at home gives your child important foundational knowledge, while involving him/her in your daily routines.

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© Growing Child 2012 Please feel free to forward this article to a friend.

How To Unlock Your Child's Academic Potential

Here are 8 ideas to help you to help your child. Some of these suggestions like reading and talking with your child are easy to accomplish every day while others will take some practice. We can always learn to improve ourselves as people and as parents. Keep your expectations realistic. If at first you don't succeed try, try again.

How to Unlock Your Child’s Academic Potential

Success often depends on how well-prepared children are for elementary school. Here's how to get your kid kindergarten ready

By JON SCHNUR | January 17, 2012 |

Last month, the White House announced the winners of a hotly contested competition among states for early childhood Race to the Top funding. Proposals from governors — 17 Republicans and 18 Democrats — totaled more than four times the available funding and underscored the fact that long-term academic success depends in a large part on how well-prepared young children are for elementary school. Of course, with budget constraints, all of America is looking for cost-effective ways to invest in America’s future. As parents begin making plans for their preschoolers for the coming year, they can use clear tips from new research to help get kids ready to learn when they walk through the doors on the first day of kindergarten.

A child’s I.Q., intellectual ability and social and emotional skills are like muscles — they develop or atrophy based on how well adults help children apply effort through specific actions starting from a young age. A seven-year study in Silicon Valley showed that children demonstrating academic readiness and the ability to self-regulate — especially paying attention during activities and following multi-step directions — by kindergarten were three times as likely to meet reading level standards by third grade. This list of practical tips can help prepare kids academically and socially:

 1) Read, read, read with each child — at least 20 minutes daily. Make it fun and engaging. Use reading as a basis for conversation with your child. Keep books in eyesight in baskets, on shelves and coffee tables. Placing books within reach for kids — and kids seeing parents read books of their own — stimulates reading activity. Parents who don’t read well in English can be effective by reading in their native language or showing a book while making up stories. An Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development study, published in November 2011, shows that kids whose parents read with them regularly at a young age performed as much as a year ahead of their peers academically by age 15. If money is too tight to buy lots of books, take them out of the library.

 2) Talk, talk, talk with your child — everywhere you go together. Prolong rather than abbreviate conversations. The average conversation length between parent and child correlates closely to the child’s future I.Q. and reading levels. Longer conversations help the parent and child do what researchers call the language dance — where parents ask open-ended questions, provide their own perspectives and use exchanges about basics as springboards into imaginative conversation.

(MORE: Schnur: Can We Teach Kids to Be Good Citizens?)

 3) Give at least three positive expectations or tips for each time you correct your child. Instead of always correcting your kids (“Stop that, don’t leave before clearing your plate,”) help them understand your expectations (“Once we finish eating, we’ll all clear the table to make room for playing here.”) When the child follows through, give specific positive praise for their efforts (“Thank you for waiting with us until everyone is ready to clear the table.”) As they learn academically, cite specific efforts (“You focused so well on practicing and learning to count!”) rather than attribute learning or failure to innate ability or personality.

 4) Help children develop character and learn social and emotional skills. This includes patiently helping children learn to self-regulate through turn-taking games, two- and three-step directions and age-appropriate basic chores. While it takes many years to develop, self-control has double the impact of I.Q. on future educational success. And listen to a child one-on-one, while repeating the child’s sounds or words. As they grow, ask them to tell you something about their day. Build understanding of others’ perspectives by asking children what they think others are feeling.

 5) Devote space and daily time in your home for kids’ imaginative and pretend play with your kids’ art up on walls. For children, play — with their family, with other children and by themselves — is fun. Play helps kids learn to interact with others and practice what they learn. Building blocks of character, positive relationships, language and academics are learned through play.

(MORE: DeBenedet and Cohen: Are Helicopter Parents Here to Stay?)

 6) Find a high-quality pre-school for your child. Visit programs and ask about their goals for addressing academic, social and emotional needs. You can search for accredited programs through the National Association for the Education of Young Children and learn how to analyze a program’s fit for your child with the help of a book like Choosing the Right Preschool by Bryan and Emily Hassel. Send them to pre-school ready to learn with 10 to 12 hours of sleep and a good breakfast.

 7) Limit how much your kids watch television — or any other screen. A study from the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine shows that over one hour daily of television negatively impacts future academic performance and impairs a child’s ability to pay attention.

 8) Put mobile devices away for most of your time with kids. Talking or tapping on your phone can limit important parent/child conversation and can send a message that you don’t value time with your children.

I know, I know, all easier said than done. As a parent, I can assure you that many days go by when I don’t get these right. But these tips will work best if we don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good. Even if you have a bad week, keep at it. Kids are resilient and they love learning. They can catch up for lost time. Making progress will brighten your child’s future.

Schnur is executive chairman and co-founder of America Achieves. The views expressed are solely his own.

 Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/17/how-to-unlock-your-childs-academic-potential/#ixzz1jqO2yxnT