Truth in Numbers: Count to Ten

“It’s not fair. He has more than I do.”

Bryan and Dana had started out with identical candy canes. Dana’s had dropped and broken into three pieces. There was no convincing her that Bryan had the same amount as she did.

She wanted the long peppermint stick. It was more. Bryan, then six-years-old, traded his one long stick for the three short pieces. Peace again ruled the day.

Research shows that pre-school children perceive the length of objects to be the indicator of quantity, instead of the actual number of objects.

Children were asked to say which of three vases contained the most number of flowers. One vase had three flowers. Another vase had five flowers. The third vase had two flowers about three inches taller than the flowers in the other vases. The children chose the vase with the two tall flowers as having the most flowers.

After working with young children for many years, I’ve observed this phenomenon of children perceiving length to indicate quantity. This perception explains the tears behind a broken peppermint stick, as children see the short pieces of a broken candy cane as being of less value than an equal unbroken piece of candy.

This perception of length for quantity can make it difficult for some children to grasp the concept of quantity. This exercise Number Trains can be put together with jumbo colored craft sticks. It can help your three-year-old or older child with the concept of quantity while using their innate perception of length for quantity.

Number Trains

Materials Needed

• 55 Jumbo craft sticks in red and blue (30 red color, 25 blue)
• Two containers for sticks

Place the 30 red sticks in one container, the blue ones in the other.

Take one red stick out, and place it horizontally in front of the child. Say to the child, “One. This is one stick.”
Diagram:
(red stick)

Take out a red stick, and place it directly underneath the first red stick. To the right place a blue stick. Place your index finder on the red stick and say “One.” Then place your index finger on the blue stick and say “Two. Here are two sticks.”
Diagram:
(red stick)
(red stick) (blue stick)

Take out a red stick, and place it directly under the first two red sticks. Add a blue stick and then another red one. Place your index finder on the first red one and say "One”. Then place index finger on blue and say “Two.” Then place your index finger on the third and red stick and say, “Three. Here are three sticks.”
Diagram:
(red stick)
(red stick) (blue stick)
(red stick) (blue stick) (red stick)

Return the sticks back into the container and say to the child, “Now it’s your turn to build one, two and three.”

After the child can build these three “number trains” independently, which may be anywhere from one day to many days, introduce four, five and six, in the same manner as you introduced one, two and three. Introduce quantities to ten as your child independently builds the number trains, one by one, length by length.

Next Week: Creating Phonemic Awareness

Kids Talk is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 20 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
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©KIDS TALK™
925 N.W. Hoyt #532
Portland, OR 97209
503.274.9788
maren@comcast.net

How to Help a Child Learn to Read

Observing a child learning to read words and numbers is one of my life’s pleasures. These two skills, literacy and numeracy, are critical to a person’s reaching his or her fullest potential.

Numeracy is the ability to read, write and speak the language of numbers. By the time a child is six years old, he or she is quite capable of having a firm understanding of the decimal number system and the workings of the four basic math operations. The key to this understanding is presenting the language of numbers in a clear manner.

Hands-on materials for our number system can be presented and made available for exploration for children. Using manipulatives, children, by age six, can develop the skills to add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers up to 9,999.

When I see a six-year old with number fluency, which is matching numbers and symbols with concepts and concrete material, I feel confident he or she can communicate in the basic language of mathematics.

In literacy, the essential skills of reading and writing begin with the knowledge that language is made up of distinct sounds or phonemes.

The next step is to be able to associate distinct sounds with a written symbol. These two basic skills, phonemic awareness and letter/sound recognition, are necessary to read and write fluently in any language:

Research has shown that the basic skills of literacy and numeracy are easiest to learn between the ages of three to seven. Unfortunately, too many of our children are not introduced to important language concepts and basic skills until the age of six or older. Fluent reading usually occurs between the ages of four to nine, dependent on a person’s unique brain development.

Help a child learn to read words and numbers by providing them opportunities to learn the individual sounds in our language and then connect each sound with letter symbols.

Help a child with number work by giving them opportunities to count objects, learn the names of the numerals and then connect numerals with objects. These skills do not have to be drilled with flash cards. Concepts can be presented casually as bits of information. Use numbers in your everyday speech.

“There are twenty-even tomato plants. Let’s count them. One, two three….”

“This number 1,324 is one thousand three hundred twenty four.”

“I’ll figure out how much to buy by subtracting 17 from 54.”

Children before the age of six, when they lose their first teeth, learn unconsciously from their environment. We need to keep the environment rich with meaningful language, hands-on experiences and correct information. A simple but daunting task.

Next week: Truth with Numbers: Counting to Ten
Two weeks: Creating Phonemic Awareness

Kids Talk is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 20 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
http://www.shininglightreading.com/enews.html

©KIDS TALK™
925 N.W. Hoyt #532
Portland, OR 97209
503.274.9788
maren@comcast.net

Liberty, Freedom and Responsibility

“Freedom is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented with a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”

~Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Liberty. An intriguing word, coming from the Latin word “liber,” which is the bark of a tree that was used for writing. The word for read in Latin is "liber;” the word for book is “libre.”

Liberty, library, literacy all connect back to the bark of a tree.

In ancient Rome, the test of whether a person was a freeman or a slave, was determined if the person could read or write. In many cultures teaching a slave to read was punishable by death. Freedom from slavery and having the rights of a citizen depended on one’s ability to read and write.

Years ago, I worked on learning Russian for about six months. As happens, life intervenes and when I came back to it, it all looked like funny Greek letters, again. It was a humbling experience. This voracious reader couldn’t remember the Russian alphabet.

Perusing National Geographic magazines, I notice signs in a multitude of languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic. Unable to decipher a word, I realized that in those cultures, I am illiterate.

There, I would be less than a first-class citizen. I would be subject to being unemployed or victimized due to my inability to use the language fluently. Unable to read and write, I would lose many freedoms. In a new culture it would be important to exercise my right to learn to read and write and to regain those freedoms.

Today in America, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are more than 90 million adults who cannot read well enough to understand this article, which measures at an 8.8 grade level on the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Index.

This month we give thanks for living in a country built on the hard-won ideas of our founding fathers, as expressed in our country’s Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

With these words, I believe our founding fathers saw every person as having a right to life, a right to learn how to read, which is liberty, and the right to pursue happiness; rights that we as responsible citizens should be constantly debating and protecting in order to safeguard our freedoms.

Liberty is a right. Liberty becomes freedom when we take the responsibility to learn to read and continue to read. Freedom comes from accepting responsibility for having a right. Freedom is earned by exercising a right. Freedom is earned by taking responsibility.

There is no freedom until liberty is joined with responsibility. To remain free, we must read and ensure literacy for everyone. Then freedom can ring, from every mountainside, everywhere for everyone. Our children deserve no less.

Next week: How to Help a Child Learn to Read

Kids Talk is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 20 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
http://www.shininglightreading.com/enews.html

©KIDS TALK™
925 N.W. Hoyt #532
Portland, OR 97209
503.274.9788
maren@comcast.net

Be Prepared for Cousin Chaos

Holidays are times for large family gatherings. Often times family get-togethers have mild to horrible cases of cousin chaos. Cousins, who may see each other infrequently, vie for adults’ attention along with trying to figure out who’s who in the pecking order of the family. Little wonder that craziness can ensue.

More than once, my jaw has dropped as I witnessed children’s antics that they would never, ever do at home. Cousin competition can lead to pranks and quarrels that can spoil everyone’s fun, or worse, lead to long-term hurts.

My mother has interesting and funny stories of her cousins’ antics at her grandparents’ farm. Her accounts of rat pranks, barn lofts and cornfields, coupled with a few personal incidents, caused me to seek a better way to manage family gatherings so that family harmony, along with my sanity, could be maintained.

Plan ahead. Realize that cousins, as soon as they can crawl, will be trying to figure out where they fit in the family hierarchy. Tests of skill to mean-spirited pranks (such as jumping off roofs or locking people in closets) can abound as adult family members are busy carving the turkey or slicing the pumpkin pie.

Plan activities, from preparation, serving and clean up, that will involve all family members. Children as young as three can help set tables and clean up. Encourage older children and teenagers to be responsible for running games and preparing snacks and drinks. Having a job helps you feel you belong and engenders cooperation instead of competition.

Have rules. Make it clear to children and adults what behavior is expected by having clearly stated rules. A quick meeting or note before the gathering can get things started on the right foot. A session might go like this. “I want everyone to have a safe and fun time. We need to have a few rules about how to do that. What rules do you think we should have to be safe and still have fun?”

Let each person state something fun for them and how to do it safely. You might want to have someone write this all down as you go. With 15 to 20 people this should only take about 10 minutes if you facilitate and keep things moving.

If an important rule is not mentioned, such as “no swimming alone,” bring it up. A 10-minute meeting will make it clear to everyone that safety and fun are number one and how the group plans to make it happen. Also, no one can slip one by Aunt Betsy, saying, “Well, my dad said I could.”

Say "thank you." Say "thank you" to everyone who is at the family gathering for coming and sharing. A handwritten note with photos is always appreciated. Thank you’s are contagious and help us feel like we belong.

Get a head start on cousin chaos. Plan ahead and get everyone involved in some aspect of the gathering. Have clear rules of behavior that are established by the group in a quick, fun meeting. Be sure to let latecomers know what’s been decided. Foster an attitude of gratitude by saying thank you to everyone at the gathering. A few well-directed plans can help you avoid family fatigue and have an enjoyable celebration.

Plan to have a wonderful Holiday Season!

Next Week: Liberty, Freedom and Responsibility

Kids Talk is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 20 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
http://www.shininglightreading.com/enews.html

©KIDS TALK™
925 N.W. Hoyt #532
Portland, OR 97209
503.274.9788
maren@comcast.net