Supporting children’s early mathematical development
I have been thinking about patterns for a long time, occasionally making progress in understanding how children learn to identify and think about patterns. Overall, it is slow going. There isn’t nearly as much of a research base on learning patterns as there is for learning about numbers or shapes. The one study I have […]
The following is an extended excerpt of a cover letter for Is It a Vehicle?, a book I have play-tested many hundreds of times in a wide range of situations over the last five-plus years and not yet found a publishing home for. I hope you enjoy the writing, and I invite you to share widely. […]
To celebrate ten years of Math On-A-Stick, we built Minnesota’s Largest Pattern Block Mosaic yesterday at the Minnesota State Fair. Careful study of this next image reveals 24 jaggedy “rows” of 7 large hexagons, totaling 168 regular hexagons (with a few more than that in the image above, added later on with the few remaining […]
Note: An earlier version of this post was part of the Talking Math with Your Kids newsletter. The provider I used for that newsletter ceased operating a while back, but I saved all of the content and will republish some of that writing here on the blog from time to time. The newsletter itself lives […]
I wrote about two competing theories recently. Each is an answer the question Why do you never see a square on the rectangle page of a shapes book for young children? That question stands in for lots of other specific questions, such as Why do counting books tend to stop at ten? and Why are […]
Why do you never see a square on the rectangle page of a shapes book for children? I asked this question of a colleague this summer. It turns out that my colleague and I have different answers to this question. I’ll share both of these answers with you today, then offer evidence for one of […]
I received this note recently: I teach 1st and I’m also in … M.Ed program for K-6. I’d be interested in having you come to our class. Let me know if that’s still possible this year. Can I make time to talk math with young children? Of course I can! Pretty soon, we had agreed […]
I am currently writing the teacher guide for my next book, How Did You Count? (See a couple of teaser photos at the end of this post!) A section of a chapter of that teacher guide has the heading Seek to Understand and to Be Understood. Those who know my teaching will not be surprised […]
I am obsessed with this shape toy I saw in the gift shop at the Science Museum of Minnesota last week. Seen from above in the first photo, the triangle looks like a triangle. Seen obliquely, we notice that the triangle is embossed on a half-sphere, and so the sides of the “triangle” are actually […]
A very snowy winter is turning to a long, slow spring here in Minnesota. It is the kind of spring that makes us joyful for sunny 45° days. So I went for a long walk Sunday afternoon. Together with a meaningful percentage of the population of the city of Saint Paul, I found myself walking […]