Learning with Young Minds

  ‘Moving right’ and ‘moving up’ is so addictive that we can’t stop playing the Treasure Hunt. So, here are some more ideas to play the game with paper-pencil , Google slideshow and, our favourite, with buttons and sparkling marbles. You may wonder why to play the same thing again and again. Will the kids be even interested? Well, there are always little new things to introduce. This time along with ‘right and up’, we also moved ‘left and down’. And to make the task slightly trickier, we gave more than just two options (coordinates) to choose. The paper-pencil and buttons-marbles versions are even more versatile. They allow simple addition and subtraction with coordinates as shown in the pictures. You can even cut the places (lighthouse, boat, etc.) and make them stand with the help of a small stick (and play dough) in the appropriate places!   The buttons-marbles version is great to ‘move’ from one place to another and kids really love moving. And you can track the mov...

  Let’s go on a treasure hunt! Likely responses to that statement are ‘Wow! When? Where?’ Everyone gets excited by the idea of finding a treasure. You may have set up a treasure hunt for your little ones or read the exciting stories of Treasure Island, Peter Pan, Faster Fene or Feluda. And on top of all these, if we can introduce the coordinate geometry while finding a treasure, well, nothing like it! And that’s exactly what we did! We looked for the treasure while first going right and then moving up. All the while, counting steps from the clue. And Bingo! We found the treasure 😎.  And here is a small clip showing how you can do it using this  Google Slideshow (available for the subscribers).😇 After we understood how to go ‘right’ and ‘up’, we learned about the ordered pair (x,y) in the first quadrant. Here, we did not really talk about the mysterious Mr. X (and Mr. Y), but we introduced the ordered pair as (Right Steps, Up Steps). With this interactive  slides...

  सशाची फजिती ( जोडाक्षरविरहीत ) पाठीवरती पडले पान ससा पळाला लांबच लांब   तो ओरडला , “ आभाळ पडले!” मग सगळेच धावायला लागले   सिंह ओरडला , “ सगळे थांबा. एकदा जरा वरती बघा.”   आभाळ काही पडले नाही सशाची अशी फजिती होई. Printable PDF for the subscribers 😀

  How many stars are there in the sky? How many fish swim in the sea? How many types of dinosaurs were there? When children are on this special ‘question asking spree’, adults can think of only one question ‘How many questions are you going to ask?’ 😅 Counting is the most basic mathematical concept that children develop at very early age. Toddlers, who do not know anything about counting, point out immediately if one candy goes missing from the handful. Children also understand that same objects can be classified into different groups based on some other characteristics. This is particularly visible when they resist putting ‘their’ chocolates with ‘others’ chocolates in the same category. Calvin’s cartoon shows this wonderfully!     And so it feels rather natural to introduce two-way classification as an extension of simple counting. We played this simple game with coloured (red, blue) buttons and muffin liners. Each muffin liner represents a team of red and blue p...