OK, so it's not easy to find the time to make a marvellous home cooked meal and dessert every day for the family, let alone involve our kids in making it. How many of us have the time to spend hours slaving over a complicated, nutritious meal that the whole family will enjoy? Other things take precedence - work, after school clubs, housework, homework. The question of whether you sit with your children and coax them to complete their homework, or whether you leave them to it, believing that it should be something that is completed independently, is one that can be left for another day. But if we want to spend time with our kids helping them with their learning, and cook a meal for the family, why not combine the two?
Recently my daughter's homework involved identifying items bought from the supermarket that were measured in millilitres and litres. While I was cooking I was able to ask her how many millilitres a bottle of oil holds, and how many millilitres is in a half litre bottle of milk. Measuring things is an important part of the maths curriculum in primary school, and involving your child in measuring ingredients and talking to them about grams and millilitres is great practice for them. Even younger children can be involved in measuring and working with quantities. Before they begin to use standard measurements they can count the number of spoonfuls or cups to be put into a recipe, and they love to try breaking the right number of eggs into the bowl when making a cake. (Beware, this takes some practice - there's many a time I've ended up with raw egg all over the floor or the table)
Another important aspect of involving children in cooking is teaching them about healthy eating. Talk to them about why you're cooking a particular meal and the importance of a balanced diet. Show them that taking the time (even when you don't think you've got much of it to spare!) to make a nutritious meal, and then sit down and eat as a family, is something you value and try to do as often as you can. For fussy eaters, getting them involved in the preparation of a meal can be a great way to get them to try something new. If they're made it themselves they're more likely to want to eat it.
I know that we live in the real world, and we don't always have the time or the patience to use the mad rush of cooking the evening meal as a learning opportunity for the kids, but once in while let them make a mess in the kitchen and help you cook the dinner - you might be surprised at how much they learn.
Showing posts with label maths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label maths. Show all posts
Monday, 18 June 2012
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
What time is it?
My children love this question. "What time is it Mammy?" is a regular utterance in our house. Why they need to know the time, I'm not sure. They are only 5 and 7 after all, and during the school holidays we're all more relaxed about bedtimes and mealtimes, so it's even less important. With no school day to start or appointments to get to, we can chill out about the time. And yet they still like to know.
I encourage them to have a go themselves. My 5 year old can tell me the o'clock, and is starting to get to grips with half past. The 7 year old has got the hang of quarter past and quarter to, but when they asked me the time at twenty to eight the other evening, the discussion that followed got rather complicated. How is seven-forty the same as twenty to eight? Why, when the long hand is pointing to the eight, does that make forty minutes? Or twenty minutes to something?
Part of the problem is, of course, the fact that we have different ways of saying the same thing. So half past three is the same as three-thirty; ten forty-five is a quarter to eleven; twelve o'clock is midday (or midnight if your children can stay up that late). The five year old happened to ask me, at midday today if it was morning or afternoon. She likes to make sure she hasn't missed a meal, so this is a common question; if it's afternoon she should have had her lunch. We were in the car at midday and so had to hurry home to eat! But was it morning or afternoon? Well, neither, at the exact moment she asked me. And that started another discussion about time.
With preschoolers, parents can help teach time by talking about times of the day, and the order in which we do things. "It's breakfast time now, then we'll get dressed and after that it's time to go to the toddler group." Think back over the day with your two or three year old and talk about what they've done, and the order that things happened in. This gets them understanding that time is sequential, and that there are certain times for certain activities. Make a clock with a paper plate, some hands cut out of cards and a split pin so you can move the hands around, and let them play around, looking at the numbers and beginning to show them the time on the hour. This will be great preparation for starting school and learning to tell the time. Talking about the past as well is as important as times of the day. When you were a baby; when I was a little girl; in the olden days (which is very subjective, as was brought home to me when we were watching Back to the Future a few weeks ago, a film guaranteed to cause confusion around time concepts, and my 7 year old asked me if it was made in the olden days? Yes, when I was your age!)
Show your child different types of clocks and watches. My watch has no numbers on the face, but my children still like to look at it and see if they can work out the time. Our alarm clock in the bedroom is digital and they know that this is a different type of clock, although understanding how the digital display relates to an analogue clock face is tricky. Making a sundial is a great, and very simple activity. Next time you spend a sunny day on the beach, put a stick in the sand and mark where the shadow falls, then keep coming back to it during the day and marking the hours, talking about the way the sun moves across the sky and the shadow moves. "What's the time Mr Wolf?" is a game I remember from school. Play this with your children; as well as being great fun, they start to learn the language of telling the time. There's loads of online games to help kids with time telling too. One of my favourites is on the bbc bitesize page but there are lots more out there.
Once children have been at school for some time and can confidently count in ones, they will begin to learn to count in twos, tens, and then, importantly, in fives. This step is vital for advanced time telling later on, as when you can count in fives up to sixty, you can count round the clock and get to 10 past, 25 past or 55 minutes past. And then if you can subtract you can make the connection between knowing that there are sixty minutes in an hour, so 55 minutes past is 5 to the next hour. We don't do this calculation of course, every time we look at a clock. Experience and practice teaches us that when the long hand is pointing to the 11 on a clock face, it's five to the hour.
Learning to tell the time is difficult; children won't grasp it overnight, and it takes years to progress from playing with a home made paper plate clock to being able to confidently state that the time is twenty to eight from looking at a watch with no numbers. But we can help our kids by talking to them about time, playing games with them, and helping them to use clocks and watches themselves.
I encourage them to have a go themselves. My 5 year old can tell me the o'clock, and is starting to get to grips with half past. The 7 year old has got the hang of quarter past and quarter to, but when they asked me the time at twenty to eight the other evening, the discussion that followed got rather complicated. How is seven-forty the same as twenty to eight? Why, when the long hand is pointing to the eight, does that make forty minutes? Or twenty minutes to something?
Part of the problem is, of course, the fact that we have different ways of saying the same thing. So half past three is the same as three-thirty; ten forty-five is a quarter to eleven; twelve o'clock is midday (or midnight if your children can stay up that late). The five year old happened to ask me, at midday today if it was morning or afternoon. She likes to make sure she hasn't missed a meal, so this is a common question; if it's afternoon she should have had her lunch. We were in the car at midday and so had to hurry home to eat! But was it morning or afternoon? Well, neither, at the exact moment she asked me. And that started another discussion about time.
With preschoolers, parents can help teach time by talking about times of the day, and the order in which we do things. "It's breakfast time now, then we'll get dressed and after that it's time to go to the toddler group." Think back over the day with your two or three year old and talk about what they've done, and the order that things happened in. This gets them understanding that time is sequential, and that there are certain times for certain activities. Make a clock with a paper plate, some hands cut out of cards and a split pin so you can move the hands around, and let them play around, looking at the numbers and beginning to show them the time on the hour. This will be great preparation for starting school and learning to tell the time. Talking about the past as well is as important as times of the day. When you were a baby; when I was a little girl; in the olden days (which is very subjective, as was brought home to me when we were watching Back to the Future a few weeks ago, a film guaranteed to cause confusion around time concepts, and my 7 year old asked me if it was made in the olden days? Yes, when I was your age!)
Show your child different types of clocks and watches. My watch has no numbers on the face, but my children still like to look at it and see if they can work out the time. Our alarm clock in the bedroom is digital and they know that this is a different type of clock, although understanding how the digital display relates to an analogue clock face is tricky. Making a sundial is a great, and very simple activity. Next time you spend a sunny day on the beach, put a stick in the sand and mark where the shadow falls, then keep coming back to it during the day and marking the hours, talking about the way the sun moves across the sky and the shadow moves. "What's the time Mr Wolf?" is a game I remember from school. Play this with your children; as well as being great fun, they start to learn the language of telling the time. There's loads of online games to help kids with time telling too. One of my favourites is on the bbc bitesize page but there are lots more out there.
Once children have been at school for some time and can confidently count in ones, they will begin to learn to count in twos, tens, and then, importantly, in fives. This step is vital for advanced time telling later on, as when you can count in fives up to sixty, you can count round the clock and get to 10 past, 25 past or 55 minutes past. And then if you can subtract you can make the connection between knowing that there are sixty minutes in an hour, so 55 minutes past is 5 to the next hour. We don't do this calculation of course, every time we look at a clock. Experience and practice teaches us that when the long hand is pointing to the 11 on a clock face, it's five to the hour.
Learning to tell the time is difficult; children won't grasp it overnight, and it takes years to progress from playing with a home made paper plate clock to being able to confidently state that the time is twenty to eight from looking at a watch with no numbers. But we can help our kids by talking to them about time, playing games with them, and helping them to use clocks and watches themselves.
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
Maths language
One of the things that comes up again and again with the parents I talk to is that things are done differently in school now, and the language used, particularly by teachers, is all new. How can we help our kids if we don't understand the words that they come home with? Some of it no doubt, is that it's a long time since we were in primary school, and we've probably forgotten some of the things that we were taught, or at least the names for them, but some of it is that there's new ways of teaching and new names for things.
Maths is guilty of this. The way Maths is taught in school today is very common sense - children are encouraged to play around with numbers and experiment, and really understand what a particular Maths problem is about, and then use the way that seems most natural or common sense to them, to solve it. Children can and do use lots of different ways of adding up, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, which is why you may have heard terms such as the grid method, chunking, and the one my daughter brought home on a letter from school today - inverse operations. Basically, this idea involves turning the sum around. Subtraction is the inverse, or opposite, of addition, so if 3+1=4, then we know that 4-1=3. This works for multiplication and division too; multiplication is the inverse of division, so 3x2=6 and 6÷2=3.
The language that is used to teach Maths in school to our children may be different to that used when we were at school, but that doesn't mean that as parents we can't learn to speak it.
Maths is guilty of this. The way Maths is taught in school today is very common sense - children are encouraged to play around with numbers and experiment, and really understand what a particular Maths problem is about, and then use the way that seems most natural or common sense to them, to solve it. Children can and do use lots of different ways of adding up, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, which is why you may have heard terms such as the grid method, chunking, and the one my daughter brought home on a letter from school today - inverse operations. Basically, this idea involves turning the sum around. Subtraction is the inverse, or opposite, of addition, so if 3+1=4, then we know that 4-1=3. This works for multiplication and division too; multiplication is the inverse of division, so 3x2=6 and 6÷2=3.
The language that is used to teach Maths in school to our children may be different to that used when we were at school, but that doesn't mean that as parents we can't learn to speak it.
Friday, 27 April 2012
Having a Maths day.
I looked at the jumbled heap of toys, clothes, food and a large blue sleeping bag on the living room floor and realised that this activity had actually worked. My two children had understood the concept of a Venn diagram, and found objects that fitted into two hula hoops labelled "things that are blue" and "things we could take on holiday", with the space where the hula hoops intersected overflowing with the blue sleeping bag. We were having a "Maths day". Is this a bit geeky, or is cool? I like to think it's the latter, but then I do love Maths. It was the first in a series of "challenges" that I set them, with little prizes as they completed each one - chocolate coins, sparkly pencils and stickers.
My four year old loved the idea of taking 5 big steps and 10 jumps then climbing up 12 steps to find the treasure, while the 7 year old found circles and cylinders in the kitchen. They both made me cuboids out of lego, after first sharing the pile of lego pieces equally between the three of them. (Yes, I know I've only got 2 children - we were playing with Flower, the 4 year old's imaginary friend that day).
Here's another idea - if you want 5 minutes peace (exactly 5 minutes that is), set a stopwatch for 5 minutes and sit your kids next to a window overlooking a road. Get them to fill in a tally chart that records the colours of the different cars that drive past. If they're up for it they can then make this into a bar chart. They might need your help for this bit, depending on their ages - this is why it's only 5 minutes of peace. Mine actually co-operated on this one, and worked together to spot and record the numbers of cars driving past. I have no idea how accurate their recording was, but did that really matter? Probably not.
You can adapt these to older kids too. Draw Venn diagrams on a piece of paper and write in the objects, or names, if hula hoops and toys are too babyish. Make it more difficult by adding another circle and labelling them with things that interest them: Names of x-factor, big brother and BGT contestants, or whatever they're into. They could do a survey among friends and family of favourite types of TV programmes, or music, or hair colour, or time spent on the internet every day! Then ask them to present the results in an appropriate type of chart. Play "I spy a shape" with more points for more unusual shapes. E.g. 1 point for a circle or square, 3 points for an oval, 5 points for a hexagon or pentagon.
I think Maths is fun and my kids love these kind of challenges. My only problem is the time it takes to tidy up after a Maths day - now where did they get that blue sleeping bag from?
Here's another idea - if you want 5 minutes peace (exactly 5 minutes that is), set a stopwatch for 5 minutes and sit your kids next to a window overlooking a road. Get them to fill in a tally chart that records the colours of the different cars that drive past. If they're up for it they can then make this into a bar chart. They might need your help for this bit, depending on their ages - this is why it's only 5 minutes of peace. Mine actually co-operated on this one, and worked together to spot and record the numbers of cars driving past. I have no idea how accurate their recording was, but did that really matter? Probably not.
You can adapt these to older kids too. Draw Venn diagrams on a piece of paper and write in the objects, or names, if hula hoops and toys are too babyish. Make it more difficult by adding another circle and labelling them with things that interest them: Names of x-factor, big brother and BGT contestants, or whatever they're into. They could do a survey among friends and family of favourite types of TV programmes, or music, or hair colour, or time spent on the internet every day! Then ask them to present the results in an appropriate type of chart. Play "I spy a shape" with more points for more unusual shapes. E.g. 1 point for a circle or square, 3 points for an oval, 5 points for a hexagon or pentagon.
I think Maths is fun and my kids love these kind of challenges. My only problem is the time it takes to tidy up after a Maths day - now where did they get that blue sleeping bag from?
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