Learning with Young Minds

  The problem of finding patterns in the apparent randomness is presented to us from the early childhood. When parents speak different words, these words are just some random sounds for an infant. But after the months of exposure, when the toddler is able to decode the pattern, she can understand the meaning of those words. So, in a sense, the language is just a code, a known code. Ciphers are the codes that are not known to everyone. Decoding these ciphers requires finding common patterns and making sense of the randomness. The ‘dancing men’ cipher may not be obvious to Dr. Watson, but through the eyes of Sherlock Holmes the pattern is evident. For Watson, the ‘dancing men’ are merely some random drawing by a child. And it’s absolutely intriguing to see how Sherlock decodes the encrypted message without the key. Decoding becomes even more exciting if it comes with a prize/ treasure😎. So here are some decoding activities.   Be a Detective I am sure kids will love to sol...

I love the rainy season and everything that comes with it: relaxing at home when it is pouring, walking by the beach when it is drizzling, feeling the raindrops on your face and even drawing ‘the monsoon’ pictures with my LO. It was while making one of such drawings that we started talking about the shape of a raindrop 💧. Or at least the shape that is usually drawn. Is it an oval? Is it a sphere? Is it a cone? No. It looks very different than all these simple shapes. Then we thought it might be a combination of two shapes. A circle plus a triangle in 2D. Draw a circle and put a triangle on top of it. Colour it and you have a raindrop. Similarly, you can create the raindrops in 3D with a sphere and a cone. As you can imagine, the discussions with kids never end when the things are still simple and explainable. So, we progressed to the number of angles and sides the shape of a raindrop has. Well, if we are drawing a triangle at the top, there is one angle. And the number of sides? Now...

  Once upon a time, there were two sticks. One always stood straight and the other one bowed. And their shadows told some interesting information about ... TIME! So, we decided to compare their shadows on the day of the Equinox.   The last time (check the previous post ), we tracked the shadows using a simple Sundial where a stick (pencil) is fixed in the vertical upright position. Though the shadows were moving in the clockwise direction (fortunately ), the hourly gaps were not equidistant. So, tracking time seemed quite difficult! For this second observation, we prepared a horizontal sundial to compare the findings with our earlier sundial. (The making of this horizontal sundial is based on https://www.sundials.co.uk/projects ) Though it is not as simple as fixing a vertical stick, it is not very difficult either. To keep the project simple, we used thermocol sheet for the base and the triangle, and a stick as gnomon. The stick (gnomon) should be parallel to the Earth’s...

This week we celebrated International Mother Language Day to show our love for our mother tongues. And now it is time to spread that love to the next generation. Not just by speaking with kids in the Indian languages, but also by teaching them how to read and write. Literacy gives entry to the literature. And literature is the mirror our culture, society and history. And we do want our kids to know their roots, don’t we? So, I am sharing a word scramble activity in three Indian languages, मराठी, हिंदी, and বাংলা . If you are wondering about the order of these languages, well, that’s the order in which I learned those languages. This activity is for early readers and does not have any संयुक्त अक्षर . The earlier letter recognition activities  with Google slideshow (Marathi) are ideal for kids who have just begun to learn the letters.   And here is your word scramble activity: Unscramble and Write . Have fun 😀😀

  Vasant Panchami or Basant Panchami marks the beginning of the spring season. This festival is a celebration of new life and learning. Goddess Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, is worshiped in many parts of India during this festival. Let’s continue our learning with these spring-themed activities during this festival. Spring-themed Shadow Matching This google slideshow activity is fun for kids of all ages. All you have to do is open the file in the ‘present’ mode and choose the correct options! Enjoy this free resource – Spring Shadow Matching Spring-themed Coordinates Activities If you are a regular reader of this blog, you must have already guessed that we absolutely love 💓working on the coordinates activities! And here are some more. Spring Coordinates Activities . (Available for the subscribers. You can become a subscriber for free using the link on the home page.) These activities include drawing flowers with the coordinates.  This set also shows how to plot lin...

  The sun has started its northward journey, the days are becoming longer (in the northern hemisphere!) and shadows are visible for longer time. Aha! Time! There is some intriguing connection between the shadow and the time. Our shadows change length at different time in the day. So, is it possible to tell the time based on the length and the direction of your shadow? That is exactly how our foremothers used to tell time before the analog and digital clocks were invented. Let’s see if we can do it. (And let me warn you beforehand, this is a looooooooooong project that can run for months 😲) We prepared this simple Sundial at home. To do this, you require a paper plate, a picture of analog clock’s body (without the hands!) and a pencil. Paste the picture at the back of the plate and make a hole at the center to insert the pencil. And of course, you need to know the cardinal directions: east, west, north and south.   (This picture is taken at the end of this experiment as we...

  During this long ‘Stay at Home’ phase, one thing missed by many is visiting local markets, stores and malls. Kids are no exceptions! So, why not take a detour from our daily routine and do some toy shopping with kids 😉. And it will not be strenuous. In fact, it is entertaining and at the same time educational. Let’s do shopping of toys and school stationary.   As we all know, just going to the store without having a shopping list can be a disaster, particularly with kids 😆. So, keep the list ready. The subscribers can download the free worksheet here: Let’s Go Shopping!   And take the help of kids to find out the total cost for each set. They will be interested in knowing which one is the most costly and the cost of the sets that include their favourite toy 😀  The concept of money can be introduced while kids practise simple addition and multiplication.  😇😀

  If you thought that the Treasure Hunt with coordinates was fun, then get ready for more adventure as the coordinate graphs show their artistic side.  Drawing images with the help of coordinates is an easy and engaging activity for kids. So, we have got some simple patterns that are suitable for small kids. And what more? The Printable Activity also includes a pattern with kites to mark the celebration of Makarsankranti 😀   And the other patterns are revealed when one follows the path denoted by the coordinates.😉 How do we do this? The path is shown with the coordinates connected by the arrows. As you move from one coordinate to the next, join them with a line. For the closed shapes such as triangle, we come back to the original point. These closed shapes are then filled with the same colour so that the image is revealed.   Let’s solve this new mystery by connecting coordinates and revealing the images. Have fun and wish you all a very happy Makar Sankranti...

  Happy New Year!   The new beginnings are enchanting, and mysterious. And so are the puzzles. Math puzzles are fun, fascinating and at the same time, educating. Puzzles about geometric shapes particularly fit this description. Children learn shapes at every early age. They also point out the real life objects that resemble these geometric shapes. But, when we move beyond this basic knowledge, many (including myself 😉 ) think that geometry is a difficult and dry subject. How can we make it interesting? Well, most of you must have guessed the correct answer by now, PUZZLES. They provide an opportunity to understand various relations between shapes with visualization. Puzzles can keep kids busy for hours during the school holidays or remote-learning days 😀 . Here are some puzzles involving triangles, and rectangles to make this new beginning exciting. Find the Number of Triangles: The initial learners of geometric shapes will find this puzzle stimulating. They have t...

  ‘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...

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 ...