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...

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,...

This famous tale from India is about a little mouse that was very smart and a king that acted like a beggar. It may be watched here ( Marathi / English ) even if you know the story 😉. The concept of money and addition/subtraction can be   easily  introduced in this story. In this story, the mouse finds a dirty cloth and visits different people (laundryman, tailor and granny) to finally make the cap. In the entire process of making this cap, the mouse is adding value to the dirty piece of cloth. In the modified version, the mouse may think about price that the piece of cloth/cap will fetch at each stage and thus children get to solve addition/subtraction problems that are embedded in the storyline. And finally, the mouse sells the cap to the King who initially acts like a beggar and steals mouse's cap! Main Activity: One of the child acts as the mouse (preferably!) and then the mouse visits the laundryman, tailor and granny, in that order. (The original story is given at t...

  Many years ago in India, there was an emperor named Akbar. In his court, there was a very clever person, called Birbal. Akbar used to taste Birbal’s intelligence many times. On one such occasion, Akbar drew a line in the sand while he was walking on the banks of a river with Birbal. Akbar asked Birbal, “Can you make this line shorter without touching it?”. Birbal immediately drew another longer line beside the original and told Akbar, “Now your line has become shorter”. This story is perfect to tell children about how concepts like, short and tall/long, small and big, light and heavy, are all relative. These concepts are not used in absolute sense. For early learners, the comparison activities usually focus on two animals or objects, where the child has to label them as short and tall (or heavy and light, etc.). However, with the Birbal’s story in the background, we can make this little more challenging and children will learn that the labels ‘short’ and ‘long’ may change as th...

  In the multilingual countries like India, speaking multiple languages is very common. School system also encourages learning of at least two languages from the very beginning. Many times, children find it difficult to learn many languages simultaneously. Child becomes proficient in one of the languages, while other languages take a back seat. Is this really necessary? Can children achieve proficiency in two or more languages? Well, if the introduction of various languages is spaced correctly, then it is possible to achieve proficiency in multiple languages. What do I mean by ‘spaced correctly’? Let’s consider an example to understand the problem. Suppose, a child is introduced two languages, say English and Marathi, at the same time. When one is just beginning to learn the first sounds in both the languages and relate those sounds to letter symbols, the confusion is inevitable. For the same /u/ sound, there are now two symbols in child’s mind: English letter U and Marathi lette...

There is an age-old tale from India about a monkey and two cats. The two cats fight over butter and while pretending to make the equal division the monkey eats up all the butter. (If you are not familiar with this tale, see here for  Hindi / English .) This tale is perfect starting point to learn about even-odd numbers and equal divisions. So, the sequel to the original story goes like this… Main Plot: The monkey is now transformed and likes to genuinely help others. One day, the monkey sees two children fighting over the toffees. When he offers to help them, the children say “We know all about how you cheated the cats. So, we don’t want your help”. The monkey finally convinces them to let him help. And the children deposit all their toffees with the monkey. The monkey is able to divide them equally if it’s an even number. When an odd number is encountered, the monkey takes away one candy and then divides equally. And so, the concept of remainder is introduced. 😀 Tips for Enacting...

Learning double digit addition, particularly with regrouping, can be tricky. This activity introduces double digit addition while kids participate in role play. Main Plot: The story is about two monsters, named, Sunny and Pinky. They are best friends and go to the Monsters’ University every day. On their way to the University, there is a candy shop and both of them love to eat candies. Every day, Sunny and Pinky buy some candies from the shop. They get a packet (bowl), for each set of 10 candies. And after making the set of 10s, the remaining candies are given without any packet. The shopkeeper calculates the total number by adding the candies demanded by Sunny and Pinky. They pay the price equal to the total number of candiesand go the university. This sequence can be repeated for many days (rounds). Introducing Double Digit Addition: While enacting the above story, the director of the play (that is you 😀 ) can tell the kids (at least one of them) to demand candies in double ...

What does storytelling have to do with mathematics? If I say they are related, many of you will stop reading further. But, believe me, storytelling and teaching mathematics are very much related. General perception is that mathematics and statistics are dry and abstract topics. And stories?…….well, stories are full of drama, mystery and fun. Who doesn’t like hearing stories? Or even better…. Who doesn’t like to enact them like a play? We all do, particularly young people. So, why not teach mathematical concepts while enacting some favourite stories? Pick any one topic, monsters, aliens, fairies, Peter Pan and pirates, or Gruffalo. Build a simple story that includes simple arithmetic concepts like addition and subtraction. For instance, two/three/four monsters stop at a candy shop while going to the Monsters’ University. And they buy some candies. Here, it is possible to include as many addition/subtraction/division problems as you want. (e.g. see here ) And the kids will love enactin...