Taking a break for the time being, nothing much to update. Exam will be coming on 2nd and 3rd of August, after that there’ll be a short break before the next semester begins. Might have random update if I have something.

Till then, it’s time to prepare for exam and make final adjustments to the second assignment of Mathematics for Young Children before passing it up on the coming Saturday.

Remember that my other blogs(Sweet Surrender, irenelaw.com) will still be updated everyday and at least once a week As if there’s anyone visiting this blog hehehe…

Math concept is accquired by applying social skill, science, mathematics and bridge language to the children. These can be divided into 3 types of learning experiences.

Naturalistic Learning Experience
This learning experience starts from birth to 2 years old. This is where the babies will be curious about things surrounding them. They will learn with their five senses namely touching, listening, smelling, looking, and tasting.

Informal Learning Experience
This learning experience starts from 2 years old to 7 years old. There is no need for a plan. The adult will just let the toddlers explore the things by themselves which is a naturalistic experience and watch over them. If they encounter a problem, the adult can offer help; or the toddlers is doing something, the adult can approach them by asking them questions and take the opportunity to teach them something new.

Structured Learning Experience
This learning experience starts from K1, K2 to primary school. Lesson or activity plans are prepared by the teacher to teach.
Step 1: Assess the level of knowledge the children have by asking them questions.
Step 2: Decide on the objective on what the children should achieve after the lesson or activity.
Step 3: Plan the experience by providing the environment and the method to teach.
Step 4: Prepare materials for teaching and ensure that the materials chosen are not dangerous.
Step 5: Start teaching.
Step 6: Evaluate whether the objective is met or not. If not, then the activity has to be re-planned.

There are 5 Math Concepts:

• Numeral: Create whole number operations, literature & mathematics, Symbolic level(number & quanity, parts & whole, number above 10 & place value ), operations with whole number using +,-,x, /
• Logical: Classifying, patterning and seriation
• Spatial Sense: Spatial relationship(distance, position, direction), spatial utilize, spatial perception(organization & pattern, construction)
• Geometry: Geometirc shapes, 3D geometric figures
• Measurements: Volume, weight, length, temperature

Assignment almost done. Should be able to print it out before Friday. Writing more than 1300 words about writting processes is not an easy task. Took me quite a hard time to make it reaches 1300 words.

Anyway, in class 4, we were given hints about the exam. If not mistaken exam would be on 3rd August 2008.

We learnt Coherence, unity and outlining in class 4. These will be out in exam!!

Coherence is one important element in a paragraph. A paragraph must be able to hold together by making sure that the movement of one sentence to another sentence is logical and smooth. There are 4 ways to do so:

• Repeating the key nouns
• Using consistent pronouns (do not change from you to she or to he, it must be the same throughout the paragraph)
• Transition signal (E.g. Next, Therefore, After that, First, Second, Third, In conclusion)
• Arrange your sentences in logical order, the common ones are chronological order, logical division of ideas, comparison/contrast

A good paragraph must have unity where only one topic should be discussed in one paragraph and outlining is a process that can help in planning for a paragraph.

We had our presentation for our first assignment today. Here are some photos. I had to blurred my coursemates’ faces to protect their identity hahaha… This is because only one or two know that I’m a blogger The rest don’t and I don’t want them to get shocked of the sudden fame for appearing in my blog/Internet without their consent.

Here you go… No photos of me because I can’t possibly take photo when I’m up there

This is my teaching materials that I had prepared.

Here are some actions of my coursemate:

Concept development is a process that explains the changes that take place in stages due to the growth and experience which is the building blocks of knowledge. This will allow people to organise and categorise information or solve a matter met during the different stages in life. Different children develop differently, they have their own pace. If they reach a certain stage one or two years later compare to those of their same age, it’s still considered within the normal range of development.

Following are Piagetian stages of concept development of children based on their age range:

• Sensorimotor(birth to 2 years old)
  Babies learn with their 5 senses, sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing. In addition, they also utilise their their motor abilities to learn basic skills and concepts such as:
  Observation, problem solving, one-to-one correspondence, number, shape, and spatial sense
• Preoperational(2-7 years old)
  Children develop concepts that are more like those of adults but still not complete in relation to what they will be like at maturity. Speech is used increasingly to express concept knowledge such as big and small, light and heavy etc.
  Fundamental concepts and skills: Sets and classifying, comparing, counting, parts and wholes, and language.
  Applied concepts and skills: Ordering, dseriation, patterning, informal measurement(weight, length, temperature, volume, time and sequence)
  Higher level concepts and skills: Number symbols, sets and symbols
• Transitional(5-7 years old)
  There would be two types of children, one type is the conserver and another type is non conserver. This is a critical stage where teachers must look out for to ensure that they have real understanding of what mathematical operations mean.
  Applied concepts and skills: Graphing(pie chart, height chart etc.)
  Higher level concepts and skills: Concrete addition and substraction
• Concrete operational(7-11 years old)
  They are able to retain original picture or object and making a mental reversal when appearance if a picture or object is changed.
  Primary concepts and skills: Whole number, operations, fractions, number facts, place value, geometry, measurement with standard units
• Formal operations(11 and above)
  Ability to learn scientific method independently, learn to solve problem in logical and systematic manner, understand abstract concepts, and attack abstract problems.

Piaget’s view of how children acquire knowledge is divided into 3 areas:

• Physical knowledge, learning about objects in environment and their characteristic(weight, height sise, texture or anything that can be determined through observation and are physically within the object).
• Logico-mathematical knowledge involves relationships each individual construct to make sense out of the world and to organise information.
• Social(conventional) knowledge is created by people such as rules of behaviours in various social situations.

Learning cycle of early childhood:

• Awareness: borad recognition of objects, events, people or concepts that develops from experience.
• Exploration: Construction of special meaning through sensory experiences with objects, peoples, events or concept.
• Inquiry: Learners compare their constructions with those of the culture, commonalities are recognized, generalisations are made that like those of adults.
• Utilization: Applying and using their undersanding in new settings and situations.

OK!! Assignment given and the topic is about the topics that we had discussed last week, Noun Clauses and steps of academic writing. Two weeks to pass up. Since I’ve done the summary last week, now I need to do a full essay for them.

Let’s go to what we studied for class 3. We were in the topic on writing paragraph where we covered pragraphing and title creation. Then we were told to write a one paragraph essay which I did quite badly *LOL* It should be very easy but I wrote something that could actually be splitted into 3 paragraphs

A paragraph must have a topic sentence, supporting sentences, a concluding sentence and make sure they have unity and coherence.

A topic sentence is a complete sentence that made up of an object, verb and a complement. It should not be too general and should not be too detailed. It can appear in the first sentence or the last sentence. When it’s in the last sentence, it’s known as concluding sentence. Make sure you do not add in any unrelated ideas.

Concluding sentence is customary for multi paragraph essay or a very long paragraph. It should summarise the paragraph. You can use words like Finally or In conclusion or Lastly and etc.

As for creating title for your essay, you must capitalised the first alphabet in every word, must not be underlined, not enclosed with a quotation mark, not ended with fullstop, and the preposition(e.g a, is, for) should not be capitalised.

After all these, we called it day.

First of all, before I go futher, we had the chance to play with tangram. It’s was quite fun. This can be used to stimulate creative thinking of children and also learn the basic concept of geometry.

What is tangram?
Got this from wiki:

Tangram (Chinese: 七巧板; pinyin: qī qiǎo bǎn; literally “seven boards of skill”) is a dissection puzzle. It consists of seven pieces, called tans, which fit together to form a shape of some sort. The objective is to form a specific shape with seven pieces. The shape has to contain all the pieces, which may not overlap.

This is not easy. Even adults will not be able to solve some of the puzzles. We managed to solve some, these are some that we managed to solve hahaha…

If you would like to play, you can just go to Google and search for “tangram”, there are lots of them there.

By the way, I have lots of reading need to do for class 2. Would be summarising them when I’m done with my reading.

There’s a debate in class saying that this English is too difficult for the children, it’s more for the adults. Well, everyone thinks that we should be studying English that is meant to be used to teach the children not us. However, if you see the subject name carefully, it’s for the professional; it’s not named English for Young Children like other subjects such as Mathematics for Young Children. You get what I mean? There’s nothing wrong with the subject. As a professional, you should know proper English, I’m sure you don’t want the parents reading or hearing remarks with lots of grammatical mistakes here and there from you about their children, it will affect your credibility as a childhood professional.

The second class was enough to make me confused We’re learning the noun clauses. All those grammatical rules are making me so blur hahaha… Frankly, I was trying quite hard in the class to digest all these things. Now I really regret that I never made an effort to remember all these rules back then in school hahaha…

A noun clause is a dependent clause that functions as a noun. It needs to be connected with an independent clause(aka introductory clause) to form a complex sentence. There are 3 types:

• that clause
  e.g. The bulletine states that science courses required a laboratory period.
• Wh- clause (Where, Who, When, What, whatever, wheneverm which, how etc.)
  e.g. I do not know where is the cafetaria located.
• if/whether clause
  e.g. I’m not sure whether or not this measurement is correct.

Basically this is the summary. I’m so lazy to elaborate Next we proceeded to Academic Writing. We were taught how to write essays! Feeling like you are going back to study for you PMR, SPM or in your English tuition class. I’ll just list out the steps:

1. Prewriting:
   Brainstorming - think about all the things you can think of from the topic
   Listing - list everything you’re thinking out
   Clustering - group those related together
2. Planning - Plan your paragraph with thesis statement, then add on with supporting statement.
   be sure that, one paragraph only discuss one topic.
3. Writing draft - Start making them in sentences.
4. Revising draft - Check the mistakes such as spellings, grammars and so on.
5. Final copy

Done! Compose this post for 2 days That’s because I don’t remember much on what I was taught because of all those grammar rules *blur* I had to revise everything all over again -.-”

OK! Was 1 hour late for class! Most of us weren’t told about it. For the first time, I am not so sure with what I’m doing there. I feel so lost and feel no confidence at all. I don’t know why. On the first class, the first assignment is already given -.-” It’s a group project and I don’t really know anyone, majority of them are seniors, they already have their own team.

I’m not sure whether I’m lucky or otherwise, the senior sitting next to me wanted to be with her usual teammate but her teammate didn’t attend class today and we were required to team up with anyone who’s in class now. She had no choice and let me be her teammate. I’m so sorry, I’m quite lost, this is my first class that relates to children and I have zero experience with children. I don’t know what to expect and how the things should be done.

Sigh… I hope this assingment would go well, she’ll do the lesson plan, and then I will get the teaching materials ready which mean I have to go do some shopping for cardboards, markers, stickers etc. After that we will have to do a presentation. ARG! Presentation, treating your audience as kids -.-” I’ve never done this… I’m so lost… I have no idea what the lecturer wants *BLUR* After this, second assignment will come. -.-”

Reading up on it is easy, anyone can do that and there’s not jargons at all but doing it? That, I have problem.

Anyway, let’s go back to what I learnt today.

How to teach children math?

• Playing games such as water play, sorting items based on clours, size(socks, mittens, shoes etc.), matching items(cards, colours etc.), board games(tic-tac-toe, checker, cards)
• Singing such as Little Indians, One, Two, Buckle My shoes
• Field trip such as visiting to places such as zoo, garden
• Counting objects such as toys
• Flash cards
• Using food such as during breakfast, counting the cereals, group the cereals, string them and count them, sandwich, pies, cakes can be used too
• Dances
• Story telling
• Body parts such as fingers, toes
• Go shopping counting the groceries and recognising the numbers on the price tags, packaging etc.
• Using clocks
• Height chart
• Role play
• Measuring objects using spoon, cups, shoes etc.
• Fill & Find bag or Mystery bag which children are asked to put their hands into the bag, feel the item in there and take it out. Then give another bag and ask them to find another item similar to the one they took out earlier on.
• Any daily acitvities will do…

When children are used to math concept in their daily life, you can help them explore more. If children A found out that children B has more cookies than him, you can try to ask them to count their cookies this will make them understand better. After that you can ask them why this happen, how to solve it, besides the suggestion provided, ask them whether there’s any other way to solve it. Lastly, be sure to follow up and review by asking more questions to clarify. Observe them and ask them questions from time to time to know their levels.

Most importantly, parents must not be intimidated by math, they must show their children that math is fun and it’s a positive thing.

Research shows that babies 7 months and above will be able to learn math by using flash cards with numbers and reading it out loud to them. This will ensure that when they go to school they can pick up mathematics faster.

Preschoolers are from age 0-8 years old. 3-4 years old can learn at least 20 numbers, 1-20 and the first 20 numbers are the most difficult. After that they will pick up the rest quite fast.

Tips to do math with preschoolers

• Develop counting skills - Kids love to count. They like to count everything they see. Count along with them.
• Learn about numbers - It’s all about number recognition. Display numbers, label items with names, numbers anywhere in the classroom. One-to-one correspondence is important. It can be done by playing matching games.
• Understand substraction and addition - Games are used for children below 4 years old. For older children like 5-6 years old, you can show them the concept with objects. Then you can test them when they are playing with blocks or when eating.
• Learn about measurement - Children like to compare height, weight, volume and so on of things they see, touch, feel and hear everyday. E.g. Use a height chart to monitor their height, a weighing scale to weigh them, using their fingers, feet or anything to measure something. Introducing standard measurement tools such as ruler or measuring tape can be done too.
• Explore geometry - Children are fascinated by shapes. Teach them to explore the shapes such as comparing or counting how many sides or corners a cube has be it 2D or 3D.

That’s all for class one. It’s not that complicated, it’s all common sense, just think more like children and have fun!