Educational creativity

     Because we have been so focused on teaching our children to read at such a young age, I think we do not do enough math or science with our young children.  There are days, while subbing in a class, that I have seen no science and only a cut and paste worksheet for math.  Just as we teach pre-reading skills we also need to teach pre-math skills.  The skills necessary for adding and subtracting and figuring out word problems don't start in first grade.  Unlike letters, left to right, one to one corespondence, math skills come more natural to young children.  Also the math skills we teach, such as one to one correspondence, patterning, and trial and error, are some of the same skills needed in reading.      Therefore, I believe we need to offer more than just practice counting to our students.  I have chosen to split up my reading centers from my math centers to give the same amount of focus on pre-math as pre-rea...

Learning to repeat, create, and continue patterns will help our little ones find and use the patterns in our math system.  Even our base ten counting system is one big pattern.  A child that can count on forever but forgets the tenth number has figured out the pattern. Patterning centers are the easiest to make and can fit into every theme.  I've gotten a lot of rubber manipulatives by themes through scholastic book clubs.  They were about $10 each set.  They are well worth the money.  I have seen apples, Halloween, fall, back to school, bugs, transportation, Christmas and others. I have used holiday stickers to make simple pattern cards.  Children can copy and extend the pattern I've made. Unifix cubes are easy to make color patterns.  I have made cards on sentence strips for children to copy.  I also use the colors we are working on.  Put two colors like orange and black for Halloween in a basket and set it on the table.  C...