Chapter 23: Math and Science

• vocabulary
• the goals of the science curriculum
• the goals of the math curriculum
• station work (seriation, rote counting, egg carton counting, sorting, shapes, shape activities)
• Toddler Math (homework questions)
• Backyard Science for Babies and Toddlers (homework questions)
• classroom-created activities: pets, plants, cooking, the senses

Chapter 24: Social Studies:

• vocabulary
• what is social studies? (define, be able to list areas that are associated with it)
• social responsibility
• how to introduce diversity into the classroom
• Social Studies activities/areas (the self, family, community, aging, the environment)

Chapter 21: Activities for Active Play

• active play
• outdoor areas
• indoor areas
• four steps to a healthy lifestyle
• activities that we played outside

Best of luck studying!

Monday is portfolio day. Please make sure to bring your portfolios to avoid losing observation marks.

The test is on Tuesday and will cover Chapters 21, 23, and 24. All necessary study information is in the posts below. I challenge you to create the outline this time (follow the headers and bolded information). Bring in any questions that you may have on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

To be handed in on Monday, April 26.

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Chapter 24: Activities for Active Play

Active play: physical activity that can happen indoors or outdoors, alone or with friends and family.

Outdoor areas:

• Separate play area for toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children
• Grassy area for running; hard surface area for wheel toys
• Fencing
• Traffic patterns to guide children
• Climbing equipment with impact-absorbing material (ex. Shredded tires or sand)

Indoor areas:

• Small-scale wooden climbers
• Mats
• Sponge-toys and balloons

Childhood Obesity Stats

Four Simple Steps to a Healthy Lifestyle:

• 5 fruits and vegetables per day
• 2 hours of screen time or less per day
• 1 hour of physical activity per day
• 0 sugar sweetened beverages per day

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ACTIVITIES:

Float the Balloons:

Provide up to six balloons. Set a stopwatch. Have the children see how long they can keep the balloons in the air without letting any touch the ground.

Raise the Hoop:

Pairs of children stand in a hoop. Challenge the children to lift the hoop off the floor and over their heads without using their hands.

Balancing:

Using the textbook, challenge students to walk a certain distance with the book on top of their head.

Simon Says:

Have one student be “Simon”. “Simon” directs students to follow directions that focus on parts of the body as well as positions. For example, put your hand beside your ear; touch one foot to one elbow.

Mirror Game:

Two children face each other. One child tries to copy the exact movements of the lead partner. Children take turns being the leader.

Human Scarf:

Have children stand in a circle. Stand in the middle with a scarf. Gracefully move the scarf from side to side and ask the children to imitate the movements. Make shapes, go faster, etc. – all while the children imitate the object.

Shadow Tag:

The person who is “it” tries to touch another person’s shadow rather than the person’s body.

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FITNESS TESTING:

Sit and reach test

The sit and reach test measures the flexibility of the lower back and hamstring muscles. The test involves sitting on the floor with legs out straight ahead, and then reaching as far forward as possible.

Sit Up Test

The sit up or curl up test measures abdominal strength and endurance. The child lies on the floor with knees flexed while a partner anchors the feet to the ground. The subject curls up their trunk then lowers back to the floor, repeating this as many times as they can in one minute.

Flexed Arm Hang

This test measures upper body relative strength and endurance. It has been adapted from the chin up test, as children and those with weak upper body strength are not able to do any chin ups at all. This test involves grabbing an overhead bar with arms bent and chin at the level of the bar, and trying to hold this position for as long as possible.

Beep Test

The beep test is a maximal exercise test to measure aerobic fitness. It involves running up and down a 20m track in time to increasingly faster beep signals. It is a maximal test, which means that the person must run until they are physically exhausted. There is no reason children should not be doing a maximal exercise test (it is more a problem for adults with sedentary lifestyles and other health issues doing the test with no preparation!). The test can be a great motivation tool for children to improve and learn to push themselves. Kids are pretty hardy things and there is no need to be soft on them!

The President’s Challenge: http://www.presidentschallenge.org/educators/group_tracking.aspx

1. Learning about the self

• Learning how to understand and like oneself
• People with high self-esteem usually contribute more to their communities

–> activities that explore likes, abilities, interests

2. Learning about families:

• Different families, family roles, families in different cultures
• Individuals and society require strong families

–> pictures, stories, guest speakers

3. Learning about community

• Learning about people/places beyond one’s own family/home
• When exploring: start in your own neighbourhood and then begin to explore outside of your own neighbourhood

–> books, films, field trips, guest speakers

4. Learning about aging

• Fight misconceptions about aging
• Interact with older adults
• Learn to meet the needs of older people in society

–> visits to retirement homes, older adults volunteering in the classroom

5. Learning about the environment

• Begin with the local environment before introducing unfamiliar environments

–> walk around the childcare facility, introduce conservation techniques

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Ways to introduce diversity into the classroom:

• Provide books/resources that include children from different cultures, races, and families
• Serve a variety of foods as part of meals, snacks, and cooking activities
• Provide instruments from around the world in the music center.
• Celebrate holidays of different cultures.

–> stress the ways that we are alike; also stress appreciating differences

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Questions and Answers:

Define social studies.

–> the part of the curriculum that teaches children about themselves as well as their family, community, and the world.

What subjects are covered under the social studies umbrella? (p. 402)

–> History, economics, geography, government, current events, careers

What is social responsibility? How can we encourage it?

Social responsibility is the practice of making a positive contribution to the community and obeying community laws.

1. Expect children to obey rules: follow basic rules in self-respect and respect for others.
2. Have children help with classroom tasks: have children contribute to the class welfare by performing routine jobs (watering plants, feeding pets, setting tables for snack time).
3. Give children opportunities to make decisions: allow them the right to vote so show that they can make a difference.

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Flat Stanley:

1. You may only visit the websites listed below. If you are visiting sites other than the six websites that are listed below, you will be removed from the computers and given an incomplete on the assignment. No Facebook, no email, no YouTube — nothing.
2. You will respect the other people in the library and remain quiet. This is an independent task with an independent mark. If you are too loud or do not stay on task, you will be removed from the computers and given an incomplete/zero on the assignment.

There are no second chances for this assignment, so stay on task, stay on the required websites, and hand in your notes at the end of the period.

Thanks everyone!

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THE TASK:

You are responsible for visiting three websites and completing the following items for each website:

1. Website’s name:
2. Website’s URL:
3. Aesthetic appeal (out of 10):
4. Play one game.
   1. Name of the game:
   2. Purpose of the game:
   3. What age group would this game be appropriate for?
   4. How the game relates to social studies:
   5. What you learned from playing:
   6. Pick one of the following options: the game is related to
      1. THE SELF
      2. THE FAMILY
      3. THE COMMUNITY
      4. AGING
      5. THE ENVIRONMENT

The Websites:

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com

http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/kids

http://www.ecokids.ca

http://pbskids.org/games/earthday.html

http://www.un.org/pubs/cyberschoolbus

http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/en/home.html

Plants

Cooking

Senses

Two-year-old Jack joins his mother in the kitchen for some baking fun. What he doesn’t realize is that it’s also a math lesson in disguise.

Teresa Pitman

Two-year-old Jack joins his mother, Carolyn Meredith, in the kitchen for some baking fun. What he doesn’t realize is that it’s also a math lesson in disguise.

“I don’t get all didactic and sit down and teach him math,” says Meredith, “but I’m impressed by how much he learns just from hanging out with me and helping me.”

As they get ready, Jack opens the egg carton and puts the eggs in a bowl. “One, two,” he counts. Meredith tells him they need three cups of flour, and scoops the first one out of the bin. “How many more?” she asks, and he says, “Two and three.”

Before the egg carton goes back in the fridge, Meredith asks Jack to count how many are left in case they want to bake again tomorrow: “One, two, three, six, seven,” he says. Meredith suggests they count them over again together, and this time, with her help, they count five eggs. Enough to make cookies tomorrow.

But counting isn’t the only way that Jack is learning math concepts. “The coolest thing Jack got for Christmas was a whole pile of coloured wooden beads and a string. He seemed to instinctively start threading them in patterns – two red, one yellow, two red, one yellow. Or he’ll do red, yellow, blue, white and then start over again with red. And patterns like that are a part of math.”

Even sorting laundry has an element of math to it – Jack first learned to help his mother separate the clothes into piles of light and dark for washing, and then learned to sort clean socks and find the matching pairs.

Peter Gamlin is a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. He says that these early encounters with math prepare little ones to move into the more abstract realm of numbers later on.

He points out that “young children are very good at making judgments about amounts. If you give them two dishes of ice cream or two bowls of candy, they are quickly able to tell you which one has more in it. This is a perceptual judgment, based on volume.”

But children can become confused, says Gamlin, when they start counting. “We then teach them that two is more than one, and that three is more than two. But in the real world, sometimes one thing is much larger than three things.” (Think like a toddler and imagine a bowl with a single, huge scoop of ice cream that is mouth- wateringly more than three small scoops in another bowl.)

This sense of what “more” or “less” means comes before a mastery of counting, Gamlin explains. “The child may only be able to count up to three before losing track. But if you put three candies in one dish and six in the other, he’ll know right away which is more.”

In his research with young children, Gamlin also works on the idea that something can, at once, be “more” and “less.” He uses a toy caterpillar family and shows that Sister caterpillar is bigger than Baby caterpillar, but she is, at the same time, smaller than Mommy and Daddy caterpillar.

“This is about understanding the relationships between things, and the relationship of the parts to the whole,” Gamlin says. “It’s actually a big concept but in my research, I’ve found that kids as young as two can do a lot of this relationship stuff.”

When she stops to think about it, Carolyn Meredith finds lots of math in Jack’s life. “We go for walks, and count how many trees are between our house and the lake. We make piles of rocks and see whose is the biggest. We discuss who has more legs, him or the dogs. When we were doing renovations, he started carrying the tape measure around and measuring everything he could find.”

She’s pleased to learn that toddler math is so easy – and so much fun. “There’s a good reason I have an English degree,” she laughs. “I’ve always hated math. But I see that Jack loves exploring and is interested in learning everything. I guess math phobia must come later in life.”

Maybe one day Jack will find himself groaning over a page of calculus questions, but for now, he’s having fun figuring out what’s more: the plate full of small homemade cookies, or the dish holding just a few big ones.

The goals of the science curriculum:

• Fostering a child’s appreciation for nature and themselves.
• Nurturing curiosity and providing opportunities to explore the world.
• Encouraging children to investigate the world using their senses.
• Providing children with hands-on experiences that develop basic science principles.
• Increasing children’s abilities to observe, describe, classify, see relationships, and solve problems.

The goals of the math curriculum:

• Identifying and classifying shapes.
• Understanding concepts of size and space.
• Sorting objects based on specific characteristics.
• Using math vocabulary that relates to number and establishes relationships between objects.
• Mastering one-to-one correspondence, which will lead to the ability to count.
• Organizing mathematical information and relating it in an understandable way.
• Establishing relationships between objects through comparison.
• Using math concepts and applying them to everyday life.

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Station Work

1. Seriation: identifying size relationships between objects.

2. Rote counting: reciting numbers in order without really understanding what the numbers and their names represent.

In egg carton counting, preschoolers will:

• Learn to assign one number to each item counted
• Recognize numerals (written symbols that represent numbers)
• Order numerals (place them in the correct sequence)

3. Sorting:

When you sort, you are classifying objects according to one or more characteristics.

Children are able to notice similarities and differences in objects, which is valuable in math and science.

At young ages, children can sort by one characteristic only.

4. Shapes:

Children begin to notice shapes as infants and become ready to build this skill in the preschool years.

Shape Activities:

• Hunt for shapes throughout the room.
• Pass around a shape and have children look at it and feel it with eyes open and closed.
• Have children hunt for shapes in a magazine and paste them on a page.
• Have the children make objects using a variety of shapes.
• Place one of each shape on a magnetic board or flannel board. Have the children look through a basket of shapes and place a shape next to its corresponding match.
• Select several sheets of paper and draw one large shape (can also use numerals). Set out 20 inch long shoelaces or string. Invite the children to create the shapes or numerals by placing the laces on top of the shape or numeral on the construction paper sheets.

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