Sorting

I recently had a conversation with a friend about the value of preschoolers learning the skill of SORTING.  Our conversation got me thinking about different ways we could sort items around our home, without buying anything special.  So, we gathered up some coins and an empty egg carton...

Both kids emptied out their piggy (but not shaped like piggies) banks.  I cut an egg carton in half and asked each of them to sort their coins.

Eli's Sorting:

It was interesting to see how Eli interpreted the directions to "sort the coins."  In my head, it was obvious that there would be four piles:  quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.  But, Eli had two piles to start:  a silver pile and a copper pile.  Once I asked him if we could sort the silver pile by size ALSO, he was able to split that pile into three groups.

Abby's Sorting:

Hmmm...ok then.  With Abby, I realized after-the-fact, that I should have given her just two kinds of coins...maybe quarters and pennies.  At two years old, she needed a bit more of a concrete place to start and sorting JUST quarters and pennies would have been much more achievable for her.  She could not even begin to comprehend sorting the silver into groups based on size.  Actually, she had a hard time comprehending sorting in the first place.  The fact that Eli could sort and she could not, leads me to believe that this is a learned skill.  Or...Eli got all of the mathematical genes.  As the children of a statistician and math teacher, I would have thought that we would have more than enough math genes to go around.  Time will tell, I suppose...

Just to make sure that sorting was as important of a skill as I thought, I did a quick reference to the Michigan Department of Education's Early Childhood Standards of Quality for Prekindergarten.  Mind you, this is only the second time that I have referred to this document, but I think I will be spending some more time with it!

Mathematics Early Learning Expectation #2: 

Children begin to develop skills of comparing and classifying objects, relationships and events in their environment. 

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Children typically:
1. Can describe, match, and sort.
2. Identify likenesses and differences.
3. Can place objects or events in order, according to a given criterion; e.g.,
    color, shape, size, time.
4. Recognize that the same group can be sorted and classified in more than
    one way.
5. Can describe why they group or sequence in a particular way.

( Early Childhood Standards of Quality for Prekindergarten, page 112)

YAY!  What a great skill to be able to sort!  After all, isn't that how we process information...by sorting it?  As adults, in our own thought processes, we are always classifying, comparing similarities and differences, and putting things in order.  We sort.  All the time.  So...let's sort!

When folding laundry, children can:

• Sort by type of clothing:  socks, pants, shirts, etc.
• Sort by the wearer of the clothing:  An Abby pile, an Eli pile, a Mommy pile, etc.
• Sort by color

When putting away groceries after shopping, children can:

• Sort by temperature:  cold into the fridge or freezer, not-cold into the pantry.
• Sort by food group:  fruit, veggies, dairy, etc.
• Sort by meal:  we eat this for breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc.
• Sort by color
• Sort by size:  rectangle, square, circle

I really like the idea of sorting the same group of items in multiple ways.  Laundry would work so well for this, plus my kids love to jump in the big pile of clothes.  Though I would have to grit my teeth a bit while doing this with CLEAN clothes, my kids would be so excited to sort out the laundry and then re-pile it up AGAIN to jump in it AGAIN.  I also like the idea of giving a child a pile of stuff and saying, "Can you sort this?"  How fun to see how their little minds work as they explain how they have sorted the items!  Don't we sort ALL THE TIME when working around the home?  Putting away toys, unloading the dishwasher, organizing a closet....

How about sorting these household items??

• Save tops from milk jugs to later sort by color.
• Sort pictures of family members.
• Little girl accessories...sort barrettes and ribbons and necklaces by color or by type of accessory.
• Cut pictures out of the weekly grocery story advertisement and then sort by color or food group.  What about an "I like this food" pile and an "I don't like this food" pile?
• Put a few types of cereal in a bowl and then sort...then have it as a snack.
• Crayons:  sort by color, or, if your crayons are anything like ours, sort by broken and not-broken.
• Sort the items for recycling.

We can even sort without even moving items around.  The other day, Eli called to me from the dining table and said, "Mom, I see some coupons."  We had this conversation:

Me:  Can you tell what kind of coupons they are?
E:  No
Me:  Well, does it look like a restaurant or a store?
E:  Restaurant
Me:  Can you tell what kind of food they serve?
E:  (looking for a minute)  Fish

Just by looking at an advertisement, we could sort through the information to determine that it was coupons for a seafood restaurant, without having to read a single word.  This is one thing I love about preschool education, our days are FULL of opportunities to learn, if we are on the lookout for them.

I could keep going...I have gotten really excited about sorting, once again showing my mathematical nerdiness.  I just can't keep it hidden for long.

Happy Sorting.

Fractions, Fractions Everywhere

Fractions are important.  

Ooooo...I like this...what an introduction for great problem solving.  "Six moms are shopping at Target and their children smell the popcorn.  If the popcorn costs 75 cents (I don't think Target popcorn costs 75 cents, but humor me) and the moms, of course, have no cash except for spare change at the bottom of their purses and the children will only be pacified with popcorn, how much does each mom have to pay?"

 In fact, as a math teacher, I will go so far as to say...fractions are a vital, foundational concept in mathematics.  If my goal was total mathematical world domination, the educational world, mind you, I would mandate that fractions be taught for an entire year.  Only Fractions. For an Entire Year.  At about the 3rd grade level.  Students need a deep understand of fractions and we're getting started over here in a very basic way.

Eli doesn't like to get dressed.  I guess I can't blame him...hanging out in your pajamas all day is pretty fun.  Last week, Eli had already put on his dedicates (by this I mean underwear, but I wasn't sure I could say "my kid was in his underwear" on a blog).  This is always the stopping point:  in his dedicates staring at the shirt and shorts before him.  Then it hit me.  After almost five years of dressing children, I knew what to say:

"Eli, you are already one-third done getting dressed."

He must be a mathematician like his mom, because he loved this.  I went on to explain, "Look, you have three pieces of clothing to put on and you already have one on.  This means that you are one-third done."    He quickly and happily put on his shorts..."Wow!  You are two-thirds done!  That means you are almost finished."  And the shorts..."Eli, you did it!  You are three-thirds done.  What does that mean?  Yup.  You are finished."

We have been dressing with fractions ever since.  Let me say, it is so hot right now that we need a smaller denominator.  To that end, I am pretty thankful that we don't have a denominator of, say, 7 or 8.  That's a winter denominator, my friends.

My kids also don't like having sunscreen put on.  Enter...fractions.

Oh how I love our swim shirts as it reduces our sunscreen denominator by one.  One head, two arms, and two legs.  We count along as each part gets greased up...one-fifth done, two-fifths done, and so on. 

Now, these ideas are definitely not rocket science, but, I do think they are a great foundation for one day DOING rocket science.  In closing, I do have to admit, that total mathematical world (the educational one) domination might be a tiny, tiny thought in the back of my head.  I guess I will start by surrounding my kids with fractions....at least, eight-elevenths of the time.

Refrigerator Abacus

My math teacher heart has been happy lately as Eli has been showing a great interest in numbers.  He is frequently asking me things like:

• What comes after 39?  49?  59?  (I love how is he is spotting the pattern of tens.)
• What is 5 + 8?  (or any combination of numbers he comes up with)
• What is between 8 and 9?
• How much is 100?

As a former middle school math teacher, I can hardly contain myself when he asks these types of questions.  In fact, I have always been curious about how young a child can learn algebraic concepts.  Oh my poor, poor, guinea pig children.  One of our favorite driving-in-the-van games is "What is Bigger?"  I will ask Eli, "What is bigger...5 or 11?"  We will also play "What is Smaller?"  It is fun to see his grasp of number concepts growing.  To help Eli visualize the idea of addition, we made a Refrigerator Abacus.

Here's what it looks like:

So, I taped two green boxes onto the fridge, using painter's tape, with an addition sign taped in between.  Each box has the numbers 1 - 6 that can be put inside.  I then tied fishing line from the fridge handle to a magnetic hook, with 12 beads strung on it.  You want to make sure that you have enough beads to represent the largest sum that could be made.  The biggest we could do would be 6 + 6, hence 12 beads on our abacus.  I had wanted to be able to do 10 + 10, but when I strung 20 beads on the string, it covered most of the width of the fridge, not allowing much room for moving the beads around.

A closer look at the numbers and boxes:

Each set of numbers 1- 6 was done in a different color with a matching strip in each box.  That way, the kids would know to which side the numbers belonged. 

My vision for this was that I would call out numbers to Eli, he would put the numbers in the boxes, and then use the beads to find the sums.  We made a little video so you could see how we are using our abacus.  The video is a bit shaky because, as we were videoing, I realized that our full trash can was right out the open.  Oops and Sorry.  Also, thank you to Abby for her keyboard accompaniment. 

I had hoped that Eli would be playing with this a lot, excitedly working with and exploring number sums.  That has not been the case.  Apparently, he is not as nerdy as I am, prefering to play with his Legos than do math at the refrigerator.    But, if I catch him in the right moment, or if he asks me an addition question that we can work out on the fridge, he will cooperate.  Abby, however, might be as nerdy as me, becuase she loves to play with the numbers and move the beads.  That's my girl.

All in all, it's been fun.  What I might need, though, is a WALL Abacus so that we can work with bigger numbers.  We'll save that one for another day...