It’s never too early to talk math with kids. Use number words, play with shapes, make patterns, and pay attention to their astonishing logic.
Math teacher mom (and long ago former student of mine), Megan Schmidt sent in the following report for Talking Math with Other People's Kids month... --- Her husband (who is not a math teacher) and three-year-old daughter—we'll call her Marian—are...
A classic toy that has earned its longevity.
"As in other areas of language development, it appears children infer the meanings of [multi-digit] numbers using whatever experiences they can access." This is one of several conclusions a group of researchers at Michigan State University and Indiana University...
I passed a lovely morning with some math teacher friends at the Museum of Math in New York City today. Sadly, I did not have Griffin or Tabitha along. We would have had a ball. I have three observations... One. There is lots for kids to do there. It is truly a...
The conversations we have with our children affect their thinking. Of course they have their own interests, but the conversations we initiate have an impact. The New York Times' Motherlode blog (subtitle, Adventures in Parenting—we'll talk about the equating...
...it's probably true for number language too. University of Pennsylvania researchers have studied the quality of parents' speech to their toddlers, and its relationship to the children's vocabulary later on. "Quality" of speech was measured by how well an adult...
I am fascinated by watching children learn to count. There are many surprising twists and turns kids take along the way. Even more surprising, perhaps, is that what seem like crazy mistakes to us adults are completely sensible attempts at getting it right for kids....
The following conversation took place about two years ago. It is probably the first one that made me realize how important it is to talk math with my kids. Near the beginning of the conversation I noticed myself making a choice between engaging her mind and moving...