We all know that opposites attract!

Did you know that children learn concepts best in opposites? It’s why in your Kindermusik class, you’ll learn fast/slow, smooth/bumpy, high/low, among many other pairs. It’s why in school, addition and subtraction are taught back to back. It’s why when you begin to drive, your teacher makes sure you know where both the brake and the gas pedals are!

Learning opposites enhances vocabulary and word association, encourages sensory and motor development, develops discrimination and classification skills, and provides plenty of opportunity for fun games. The farther apart the opposite (black and white, hard and soft), the easier it is for children to master the concept. When you add an interactive approach, this learning becomes highly enjoyable.

Here’s a few “opposite” activities:

When doing these, be sure to label the opposite words. (It’s pretty easy to forget to do that, as we adults already know the vocabulary!)

• Try tasting some opposite things like sweet sugar and sour lemon.
• Sort round cans and square boxes when putting away the groceries.
• Music is full of opposites. Put on your favorite piece of Kindermusik (or music with pitch or tempo variation), and move high and low, or fast and slow.
• Sing a song silly! (High and then low, or fast and then slow.)
• Move. Go and stop. Take big steps, and little steps. Go under, go over.
• Open and shut the doors. Or cupboards. Cause seriously, if they don’t learn both opening and shutting in a pair now, your fridge is going to constantly be left open when they are a bit older!
• Identify back or front. Left or right. Short and tall. Boy or girl. Young or old. Dirty or clean. Empty or full.
• Feel the objects around you. Hard or soft? Rough or smooth? Hot or cold?
• Read some opposite books, and talk about what you see. Here’s some favorites: Dinosaur Roar, by Paul and Henrietta Stickland. Big Dog, Little Dog, by P.D. Eastman. The Foot Book, by Dr. Seuss.

Even babies learn opposites. Talk to your baby as you go throughout the day, and emphasize the opposite words with your vocal inflection. “I’m going to pick you up.” “We are going down the stairs.”

Really, the possibilities are endless. Just have fun with it!

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose two oldest children are oil and water.

Babies and toddlers enjoy blowing. As they practice blowing, they strengthen mouth muscles and develop awareness of their breathing, which will help their language development.

With preschoolers and early elementary, blowing develops their diaphragms and builds muscle control necessary for singing and wind instrument playing.

Blowing also helps children become aware of the fact that they can use breath to make a variety of sounds, move things, blow out candles, or create a cooling breeze.

Blowing for all ages
Blow kisses – even babies can do this!
Blow through a straw into your milk, juice or water.
Blow bubbles
Play a slide whistle or a harmonica (like the one in this semester’s Our Time)
Put a dab of watercolor or thinned tempura paint on a piece of paper. Blow on it with a straw and make beautiful designs.

For older children
Put a fluffy craft feather partially into the end of a drinking straw. Blow on the other end and see how far you can make the feather fly!
Place a ping pong ball on the table. With players on each side of the table, try to blow it off your opponent’s side with a drinking straw.
Whistle
Play a duck call or kazoo

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who wants you to breathe in through your nose, and blow out through your mouth three times right now. Don’t you feel calmer?

Math Anxiety.  Do you have it?  Or are you a numbers whizz?  Perhaps you somewhere in between like me. Math came easily until it required complex computation, not just memorization.  When I had to really understand what was going on on, not merely follow a formula, I began to struggle.

For many of us, a great teacher made all the difference. The gifted guide made the complex simple and therefore we made it up to the next rung on the math ladder.  I wish I’d had a few more of those teachers to keep me going because as we mature, we discover that the math we snubbed really does have a lot to do with our real, everyday lives.

If you scratch below the surface of most any subject you find math.  Music is based on math. 8 notes in a scale.  If you flat the 3^rd, you get a minor key—every time. The first, third and fifth notes make a major chord and so on.  Basic cooking is all about fractions.  Sewing has measurement at the core.  Knitting is for those who love to count. Knit one, perl two…  Math is about relationships between things:  Hot/cold, Long/Short, Big/Little.

Why all this philosophizing about math? This winter, I’m teaching a unit on math for K-4^th graders.  My goal is to help the kids up that ladder a rung or two. 

Peggy Kaye, a seasoned educator, wrote a classic book on math games called Games for Math that I’ve used for my class. Games are a great way to make the complex more simple. I think it worked.  The kids proclaimed it the best class ever. I successfully tricked them into thinking that they were just playing games, not having learning about math!

Although she wrote the book for her work with Kindergartners through 3rd graders, many of them are easily adjusted for fun with the preschool crowd.

Here are a few games from Peggy’s book that you might like to try today:

The How Many Game: 
While “doing life” you can play this game anywhere.  Ask your child to count all the people who are standing up, or sitting down, wearing hats, walking dogs, carrying purses, etc.  At the park, in the mall, or on a bus, or in a lobby waiting for sister’s gym class to get out, this game can fill in the spaces. It teaches your child to scan a group and sort categories, make distinctions and count.  Let them tell you what to count too.

Number Collage:
This activity is designed to clear up confusion young children often have regarding one-to-one relationships between numbers and the objects being counted.  First, the child chooses a number and writes it in the middle of a 14” by 17” sheet of paper.  Then with the parents help, the child searches through magazines for pictures that she likes. If she chose a number 5, then she picks out 5 magazine pictures and cuts them out to paste on her page.  Finally, alongside each picture a number is written:  1-2-3-4-5.  The concept of 1 number per picture is reinforced as well as giving her fine motor practice in cutting and pasting. 

Kitchen Calculus:
Sorting is a skill that can be reinforced while having fun when you work with your child to put away the groceries. The child makes the decision as to where the food should be put away. You help by asking clarifying questions as needed, “Is it hot or cold? Is it in a box or a can?  Is it a vegetable or meat?”  They feel so grown up as you let them decide what goes where and allow them to put the things away independently. 

Number Ladder:
In this easy game, the parent draws a ladder with 10 rungs on a piece of paper with one number on each rung, not in order:  For example 4,7,2,8,1,9,3,5,6,10.  The child rolls a die and climbs the ladder by adding the number on the face of the die to number on the ladder.  If he rolls a 6, he adds 4 + 6.  If he gets the correct answer, he has “climbed” that rung and may go again—7 + 6. If he misses, he “tumbles down” to the bottom and rolls again.  As the parent takes a turn, it is the child’s job to catch the parent making a mistake.  If he does, the parent “tumbles down.” Kids love the success of climbing to the top, and are thrilled to catch a parent making a mistake.

Peggy Kaye concludes the introduction of her book with some good advice on teaching our kids math. 

“The best advice on how you should play (math) games is…relax.  Relaxing might mean changing the rules at the spur of the moment to better suit your child’s personality. It might mean forgetting about a game halfway through because it stopped being fun. Relaxing means not worrying if your child seems to have trouble playing a particular game. Give the child a chance. Don’t worry about the stumbles. Your child will learn to add and subtract and do all the other procedures in good time. Relax—all will be well.”

Playing math games was certainly the most relaxed teaching I’ve done in awhile.  We all had fun and came through it smiling.  What a great strategy for learning math!  I want my kids to make friends with math early in life and enjoy all the various expressions of it they’ll undoubtedly encounter throughout their lives.

-posted by Donna Detweiler, who has a secret desire to study physics someday.

Ever lost something and then thought “Hmm… I wonder where I put that?”  Well, now you and your child can have fun looking for the misplaced items.  Just change the words of this Our Time Away We Go song and instead of finding frustration, you and your child will find laughter and a good time looking for things.  

For example, the other day I just couldn’t find my purse, so I started sing “Where oh where did I put my purse? Where oh where did I put my purse?”  All of sudden, I remembered that I’d left it in the car, and I happily went out there singing “Found it, found it, here is my purse!”  Luckily, not too many neighbors were home at the time and they all know what I do for a living, so when I break out into song it doesn’t really faze them!

I love hearing that my Our Time classes have already started to enjoy this game at home too!  Even on the first day of class, one mommy came running back into class saying that her child was jingling her keys as they were leaving! 

Singing with your child not only helps build self-confidence, but it is a wonderful way to bond as well.  Just as in story reading, singing directly exposes the singers to patterns of language, including rhythm, speech sounds, syntax and rhyme.

For your older child, try singing a song and allowing your child to fill in the blanks. (“Twinkle, twinkle, little ________”.)  By doing this, you are developing her sense of inner hearing as related to pitch and melody. 

Singing a song in your mind is akin to thinking up a story or making a plan without speaking out loud.  Remembering the sequence adds an additional level of complexity.  All these are vital life skills.

-posted by Miss Beth, who happily sings at any chance she gets…..including the grocery store when looking for the bread!

that today is National Puzzle Day? 

And it’s not just about jigsaw puzzles. Puzzle Day includes crosswords, number puzzles (like Sudoko), brainteasers and word searches.

Puzzles promote teamwork (so do them with a friend!). They are also thought to help reduce stress, and are a great way to exercise your brain. For children, puzzling promotes reasoning skills, visual discrimination and social interaction.

All that aside, puzzles are just plain fun.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who is going to play Bananagrams (kind of like a free-for-all Scrabble) with her kids this afternoon.

A couple of days ago I blogged about inhibitory control – the ability to stop yourself in the middle of an activity and wait. Miss Nancy, who uses her Master’s to teach during the week, and Kindermusik during the weekends, gave us this great activity to practice inhibitory control.

Here’s a little background:

Jean Ritchie, the noted Appalachian singer, storyteller and folklorist, created this singing game.  Her tune is adapted from the melodies of two Danish singing games:  “Down in the Meadow” and “Seven Jumps”.   – from Down in the Valley – More Great Singing Games for Children, 2000 New England Dancing Masters Productions.

Listen to the music here and learn the song. It’s easy to pick up.

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Wake up you sleepyhead and go and get the cattle,
Wake up you sleepyhead and go and get the cows.
All jump up and down, singing, and acting like an impatient parent nagging a child.

The cows are lost, the sun is warm.
All pretend to be the child looking for the cows, shading eyes with one hand, while sleepily getting down on one knee on the word lost.  Go down on the second knee while pointing to the hot sun on the word warm.

I think I’ll rest, ’til they come home.
Go down on one elbow on rest, then two elbows on home, and pretend to go to sleep.

The leader waits for a few seconds, then slaps the floor and starts the first part of the song again. Everyone jumps up and joins in. Repeat ad infinitum.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who thanks to Miss Nancy is going to hear this song at her house ad nauseum!