Crafty Ways to Sneak in Math Principles

Today, I'm taking a detour from baby sign language to share some fun information from the book I co-authored with Dr. Susan Goodwyn, Baby Minds.

Given the choice, almost all of us, no matter our age, would choose to play a game or bake cookies or fly a paper airplane rather than sit down in front of a teacher for a formal lesson in math basics. Fortunately, savvy parents can take advantage of these more enjoyable activities—and others—to help their young children start appreciating the principles behind numbers, shapes, and even fractions. Here are some examples:

• Board Games: Old favorites like “Chutes & Ladders” and “Candyland” require children to recognize the number when they spin the pointer and then to count off squares. In doing so, they practice the sequence of number names and get a concrete lesson in the quantity that each number represents. The added benefit is that the child is highly motivated to pay attention, not only to the number squares she moves but also to any mistakes her partner might make. As a result, a single game of Chutes & Ladders can yield a total of 30 or more lessons in number recognition and counting—without your child ever suspecting you had an ulterior motive!

• Card Games: Simple games like “Go Fish” can introduce young children to numbers. Even if they don’t know the number names yet, they can hold up a card that represents what they want (“Do you have any of these?”) and the other player can name it (“Oh, you want to know if I have any 5s.”). “Go Fish” also requires kids to compare cards in their hand in order to put sets down on the table. (Tip: For very young children, limit the deck to cards 1 through 5, gradually increasing the number as they get older.)

• Cooking: Making cookies has the potential to expose kids to lots of important math basics. For example, measuring teaches “more” vs. “less” and fractions. Sorting the cookies into equal numbers to “share” teaches equivalence. Baking teaches about time.

• Paper Folding Activities: Start appreciating the mathematical nature of traditional activities like wrapping presents, making paper airplanes, and cutting snowflakes from folded paper. In each case, your child is being challenged to visualize how a flat piece of paper relates to its folded version.

• Sewing: Simple sewing project (using glue instead of needles and thread) require spatial skill. Pieces of cloth must be measured, cut, and put together correctly. In fact, there’s nothing like discovering that a seam is on the outside instead of the inside to remind you how important it is to think through spatial relationships carefully. For a first project, try the following: Take two equal-sized pieces of cloth, help your child glue them together on 3 sides, fill this “envelope” with stuffing, and glue up the final side. Result? Not only a handmade pillow of which she can be proud, aut also an early lesson in area versus volume!

So, pull out those board games, mixing bowls, and pieces of paper and start sneaking in math knowledge in ways that are fun for everyone!

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to visit us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis
and
Co-Founder, The Baby Signs® Program

There’s More to Emotions Than Meets the Eye

When students in my undergraduate classes would hear me announce that at least two sessions would be devoted to the topic of the “Development of Emotional Understanding,” they usually assumed I would simply be listing the ages at which children come to understand different facial expressions – like smiling means “happy” and crying means “sad,” etc. They quickly learned, however, that there’s a lot more to it than that—a lesson that it’s helpful for parents to understand as well so they don’t expect too much from their young child. Here are just a few of the important facts about emotions that adults take for granted but which children must learn—and with supportive parenting (especially parents who aren’t afraid to talk with them about emotions), tend to learn much more quickly. I've taken these from the chapter on Emotional Understanding in the book I co-authored with Dr. Susan Goodwyn entitled Baby Hearts: A Guide to Giving Your Child an Emotional Head Start

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1.Human emotions are vast in number and subtle in their differences. Consider the following different feeling states: Cranky, Cowardly, Curious, Confident, Coy, Cagey, Confused. And these are just ones that start with “C.”

2.Emotions, even strong ones, tend to fade over time.

3.People often experience two or more emotions at once, sometimes even conflicting ones (for example, a “bittersweet” experience).

4.A person can pretend to feel one way when he is really feeling another.

5.One may not actually be aware of one’s own feelings.

6.Certain emotions are not appropriate in certain situations (for example, being gleeful at a funeral or sad at a wedding).

7.Emotions can be powerfully influenced by being in a crowd.

8.Talking about emotions requires knowing your culture’s peculiar metaphors for feelings, such as the following English terms for “happy:” Tickled pink, pleased as punch, thrilled to death, happy as a clam, contented as a cat, on cloud nine.

With all this to learn, it’s enough to make a child “as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof.” Let’s just take one of the above, #3, as an example. A study published in the May 2007 issue of the journal Psychological Science has demonstrated that it’s probably not until children are 10 or 11 years old that they even experience mixed emotions, and, not surprisingly, it’s not until they are capable of experiencing such emotional states themselves that they begin understanding that this possibility exists for other people as well.

It’s no wonder, then, that “emotional understanding” develops gradually even into the teenage years. Actually, I’m betting that we all know adults who still have some growing up to do in this very important domain! .

Happy Signing (and don’t forget to visit us on Facebook)!

Linda

Linda Acredolo, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, UC Davis
and
Co-Founder, The Baby Signs® Program