Today we did some simple sorting and counting with a bag of change. The wee ones learned the names of the coins using a three period lesson, although they will need more reinforcement, for the next few hours they have the names of the coins down. Again, it's not about storage, it's about retrieval and building the pathways to the information that is contained in the mind. It has taken us a long time to figure out the mind is not contained in the head, although the brain is. The brain is simply our interface with the mind.
The oldest one still occasionally confuses nickles and quarters...stacking them requires fine motor skills...and gives us a chance to count by fours...we glossed over the equivalency of the coins, that wasn't the focus of the lesson. All we were doing was counting and sorting. Later we will listen to multiplication rock songs...and sing about fours and fives...
In the picture we have sorted out the quarters and are stacking them, later he will be able to ask questions like why do we stack them in fours but dines in fives and pennies in fives and even nickles in fives?
There are a ton of things you can do to play with math concepts everyday...
They watched PBS kids and sorted coins...the youngest one said "this is taking too long" and later "we will be counting coins forever" but he watched TV and sorted coins, sorted coins and watched TV and soon they were in their respective piles...we celebrated with some yays and clapping.
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