Learning with Young Minds

Who doesn’t know the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf? The wolf couldn’t eat the pigs because of the house of bricks, even after doing all the ‘huff and puff’. The story does not end there! 😇 The other two pigs also decide to build the houses using strong bricks. And while doing that they count and add the bricks.  But, as the wolf gets this news, he comes back with a very powerful blower to break the bricks. Can the pigs build the houses with the remaining bricks? Let’s find out using this pretend-play story. Main Plot and Enacting the Story: (The printable pdf is available here for the subscribers.) When the first two pigs decide to build the bricks houses, the third little pig says that they have less bricks as compared to what he used. So, the first two pigs add all their bricks. The story can stop here or a number can be given to the third little pig so that it can compared with the answer. The bricks numbers are such that the kids learn to add the double ...

  A block or a brick usually does not inspire any excitement among the adults. In fact, these words are commonly associated with the terms indicating stupid/dull person. And yet, the children (and Egyptians 😀 ) can use them in the most imaginative ways. Kids can build forts, pyramids, and various structures even with the most basic blocks. And with the more sophisticated ones, kids can do wonders! A set of blocks is a versatile tool in the learning process. Starting with counting and colour recognition, blocks are a great help all the way up to early multiplication and division. With blocks, there is an easy progression from counting to place the value. After 10 or 20, the counting becomes tedious and untraceable for the little kids. With blocks, particularly the small one as shown in the picture, we can introduce the concept of ‘groups of ten’ to make the counting easy to handle.  Children are able to visualize big...

  Ball-shaped ladoos, dimond-shaped shakarpali, circular chakali and anarasa……….. and the list goes on! These mouthwatering food items remind us of Diwali or Deepavali. Diwali (line of lights), as the name suggests is a festival of lights. And yet it will not be wrong to call it a festival of SHAPES. The food, the lantern (Aakash Kandil), the rangoli (a colourful pattern created on the floor in front of the door), everything is a full of different shapes and geometry. Children get very enthusiastic about preparing the lantern and drawing the rangoli at home. Their participation in these activities means children learn all about shapes, arrays and geometry even without realizing it. They will not resist simple information about shapes particularly if it is accompanied with Diwali delicacies 👼.   Diwali celebrations teache us so many things about symmetry, and shapes. For instance, look at this lantern made up of squares, triangles and rectangles. ...

How many letters does English have? 26 . And how many are there in Indian languages? Around 50 in Devanagari script! And how do we usually start learning these? Well, most of the times, we make children write endlessly. After all that mindless writing, we expect them to remember so many letters and start reading. Is that a reasonable expectation? Imagine yourself learning another Indian language (with different script) in the similar manner! I believe there is an easier alternate method to relate sounds with letter symbols. Introducing letters in play form is fun with long-lasting impact on young minds. I am going to elaborate this activity for Marathi letters. However, a similar activity can be set up for any language. The steps are as follows: Choose three to four letters (consonants) that occur commonly in your language. For instance, I have chosen म, क, स. Now, think of three to four words starting with those letters. Here, take the words that are names of animals, flowers,...