Fun Homeschooling Toddler Activities: Recognizing 11-20

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Recognizing 11-20

I taught my daughter to count 1-20 using the Signing Time Counting Time DVD, and the we solidified it by counting as we would swing at the park. And she learned to recognize visually the numbers 1-10 using her little number board books. But for the longest time I couldn't figure out a way to get her to recognize 11-20. Nothing I tried worked. But this past week I had a breakthrough. Not that the idea was incredibly brilliant - it is kind of mundane actually - but I was startled at how well it worked.

I cut a few regular sheets of computer paper into small flash card size rectangles. Then I got out her little colored pencils. She would choose a color and hand me the pencil, and I would write a number on one of the rectangles. We did them in order, 1-20. She paid almost no attention to the numbers as I wrote them after awhile, and she got bored half way through it (which has been the problem - her attention span won't last past 10).

BUT, then we put TAPE (and she helped) on the back of the rectangle with the number 1 on it, and we taped it to her chest of drawers. Then we put tape on number 2, and put it next to number 1. After around number 10, she started rocking her teddy bear. So I suggested letting the teddy bear put the number 11 up on the chest of drawers. She thought that was a fun idea, and so she helped her teddy bear do it. We put the 11 directly under the number 1, and I showed her again "11 is a one with a one in front of it." Then teddy bear put up number 12 under number 2, and I showed her "12 is a two with a one in front of it." I pointed the teddy bear's paw - "2" and "12," "2" and "12," "2" and "12." My daughter's little head bobbed up and down as she followed the paw - it was adorable. This worked all the way through 18, by which time she was rocking the teddy bear again.

I didn't know whether or not she had understood what we did. She went back to the numbers again after a little while and started ripping them off the chest. But then - the magic of these moments! - she ran up to me with a little rectangle, saying, "Mommy! 14 fell down!" And sure enough, there in her hand was "14." =)

3 comments:

~Babychaser~ said...: I can't believe she's talking enough to tell you 14 fell down... let alone talking! My little guy is still in rudimentary speech... saying words like doggy and ewwww and more and buuuu (with of course is bug). He has an ever growing vocabulary of words, but isn't yet doing sentences. :) Great idea with the numbers though! I'll have to remember that!; August 13, 2008 at 7:59 AM
klh said...: Yeah, she talks really well. I hear girls tend to talk earlier than boys. Its incredibly fun to hear what is going on in her one year old little brain. She's been telling us stories, and she repeats them a lot. Like, the other night she told us at least 40 times "I had a cookie, and I took just a couple bites - just a couple of bites! - and I made a cross!" (it was a circular cookie and she had bitten 4 corners, and her dad noticed it looked like a cross). Another favorite is, "I threw the blue ball into the water. All gone! Daddy shared the pink ball." (at putt-putt she threw dad's ball, which was blue, into a waterfall and so we had to share my pink ball for the rest of the game).; August 14, 2008 at 10:14 PM
Queen of Carrots said...: I should do this with my 3 and 4 year old. They have some familiarity with the higher numbers, and have just about got them down in counting, but they don't recognize them all yet. And they would LOVE anything to do with tape. :-); August 27, 2008 at 8:35 AM

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Reasons to Homeschool

These reasons are not particular to toddlers. I am more writing this to remind myself later. I am adding to it as I go.

1. It is a well-established fact that physical activity is really important for the human brain to learn well, but, especially now with physical education programs being phased out more and more, our schools are set up in such a way that kids are expected to learn sitting still for 6-8 hours per day. Then they are sent home with a mountain of homework, which, if justice is done to it, requires even more sitting still. Homeschooling allows for more freedom in the schedule and flexibility in the form of education to allow for much more movement and exercise.

2. Sleep deprivation. This especially hits teenagers. Research has documented that teenagers get their best sleep by going to bed and waking up later than children and adults. But middle schools and high schools start around 7:30 am, making it impossible for teenagers to get the sleep that will enable their brains to function and thus learn well. Homeschooling allows for each individual child to sleep at the times most appropriate for that child at his/her particular stage of development.

3. Learning Styles. Different people learn differently, but a class with 20-25 kids in it simply cannot accommodate the learning styles of each child. This leads to some kids deciding "I can't do math," and then blocking it out, when really the issue is the way in which math is being taught. In the homeschooling model, the mother, who knows her children best, can work with the children's particular learning styles in mind.

4. Different people have different gifts. There are many ways to be "smart," as Gardner's Multiple Intelligences famously documented. Yet, the traditional education system is set up such that all children are judged on the basis of certain intelligences. Thus, many kids end up being labeled "stupid," because the ways in which they are created to be smart are not graded in school. This is ridiculous, because it is not the way the post-school world works - after school, what really matters is your gift. Even worse, because children's individual gifts are not adequately explored and developed, kids in college are still trying to figure out what to do with their lives, and many persons in my generation seems to have spent their twenties STILL trying to answer that question. Homeschooling allows for focused attention to, identification of, and development of individual gifts.

5. Children learn what they live. School is an environment that disappears when you graduate. So even children who adapt very well to the school environment have a rude shock awaiting them when it is over, because the real world just is not organized like the educational system. For example:

5.a. Socialization. Once an adult, life becomes multi-generational. You are thrown into an age group ("adult") with people who wear clothing, talk, act, and believe things from another time altogether, like your parents. I remember the look on a teenager's face when she asked, "What Sunday School class will I be in now?" when she was graduating. When she realized the "adult" classes were the answer, she was bewildered and didn't come. She was completely unprepared from her life to that point to be in a class with people 20-30 years apart from one another in age. Spending the overwhelming majority of your time for most of you life only around people exactly your own age, plus or minus 3 does not exactly prepare an individual for learning to call other persons, who make up the majority of the rest of the world, "my friends."

5.b. Kids in school often learn to find their work to be boring and unrewarding. It is a hoop to jump through. It should not be a surprise that this is producing adults who find their work to be boring and unrewarding, a hoop to jump through for money.

Fun Homeschooling Toddler Activities

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Recognizing 11-20

3 comments:

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