Wednesday 12 December 2012

Learning in the holidays

As we approach this Christmas Season this is a good opportunity to look at some recommendations for what you might do to keep your children's brains ticking over during the holiday.

Over the last few weeks my blog has referred to maths activities, listening games and reading skills. If there is any extra spare time why not turn your thoughts to history and geography?  There are many great places for family visits, such as Hampton Court Palace, museums in London (free admission to those), and art galleries. Websites will inform you of special exhibitions and of discount events, and travelling on the train gives you two for one offers on prices.

To make the experience particularly educational involve your children in the planning. Train schedules, car parks, ticket prices, choice of visit, maps of venues and making a timetable for the day can all be worked out together. Children love to be trusted to organise events and will be proud to show you their skills. Learning works best in the shape of an enjoyable experience… counting cash and sorting change on a shopping trip is the point of learning mathematics – it is what number work is for! Use those mobile phones for learning; sign up to a dictionary app for a new word every day or a puzzle, or even a simple daily crossword.

Allowing children to choose and make decisions is also very useful. Buying books for them is not quite the experience that being allowed to browse and choose them is. Don’t forget the public library either, a great, cheap and enjoyable outing. Direct your children to the non-fiction sections of the library, children love history and will be fascinated by how others lived. Maps are a great source of discussion… plan a walk using a local area map, or see if you have a local heritage trail… and keep talking as you go because discussion helps children to understand more than they will take in for themselves. Even a walk in the park (walking allows for far more conversation and observation than a car journey) or around the neighbourhood can be filled with discussions about what can be seen. Can you and your children name and recognise 5 types of trees or breeds of dog? Which Christmas decorations do they like as they pass them?

If you have lots of children and the possibility of childcare, try making an individual plan for a special and different day out for each child – children like few things more than a day of their parent’s undivided attention. My own mother took me to see the Tutankhamen exhibition on my own when I was about eight and I have never forgotten the pleasure of the exhibition or the delight of a day out with her by myself.  

Enjoy the precious days of the Christmas break.

Thursday 6 December 2012

Practical Maths

There is an idea among school communities that maths is a difficult abstract set of activities that need to be learned in order to be good at the subject. This is an interesting idea that denies much of the import and creativity that make maths an exciting and practical skill for real life.

This week I thought I would share a few ideas for bringing maths to life in the very simplest way, and show that it is the most basic skills that lead to the ability to think in the imaginative ways that lead to mathematical success in later years.

Understanding quantity is the key to dealing with numbers inside our heads. If you can’t work out the value of numbers and the general size you are considering, then estimating, checking and understanding are going to be difficult. Children find number ordering relatively easy by rote – many nursery children can count to fifty easily, but few have a sense of quantity and constructing this is an important task. An activity you can try for your selves is looking at a crowd of people (in a stadium or on the news) and asking ‘how many people can I see?’  For children estimating simple numbers is difficult: twenty, thirty  or forty - do they recognise the relative sizes? Most children assume that large numbers are homogenous and similar to each other instead of vastly different. People who are good at mental arithmetic generally have an accurate picture of the size of numbers to use alongside a quick understanding of the operation required. For those of you who find it hard to add up and divide the bill without a calculator at the end of the restaurant meal, you may not be bad at maths at all, but your mental picture of the numbers and quantity bonds is not well established, and you dont quite trust it!

So helping children to develop a notion of quantity is very useful. Guessing the number of things in a jar is a good idea, guessing first and then checking, and then playing again with other amounts to consolidate. Counting money is a truly valuable activity – estimating by recognising the different denominations, and not by the size of the coin heap! I have always used cards with children that find number concepts difficult. Simple games of gathering cards in turn round the group to make up an exact number… this game is fantastic for children on many levels firstly because children love turn taking games with their parents, secondly because it is number conservation and quantity practice, but thirdly and most usefully because the card configurations of numbers (diamonds, spades, hearts and clubs) always use the same shape for their numbers, and this allows children to develop a mental image of the quantity named by the number.

Once exhausted by number games how about the quantity of liquids or capacity - can you identify 100ml? Cookery with children is great introduction to measurement; ask them to measure and check, all the while reminding them of the sizes they are looking at. How tall are your children? Make a guess before you get out the tape measure – and ask them to guess too.

Maths is a game the whole family can play!