Learning with Young Minds

  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 ...

  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...