“Activities”

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A reader wrote in the following request:

I need to know what would be a good activity to use with preschool and primary students to help them grasp the concepts of the following:
1. Centering
2. Reversibility
3. Conservation of
-amount
-length
-number
-liquid
-area
I would really appreciate any suggestions!

Professor Homunculus replies:

The best activity would be for you to be able to explain those concepts to yourself without using any words like the ones you used in the question.
Considering these things as “concepts” and trying to teach preschoolers “concepts” is a self-defeating concept itself.

Put the things you want them to understand in simple layman’s terms. Don’t worry, you are not simply going to “explain” them to the kids, but you need to stop thinking in terms of “concepts” yourself when you are dealing with children. It is fine to talk about those things at conferences, where teachers have to pretend they understand things.

On the other hand, you cannot pretend to a kid. Get the Ideas in simple laymans terms in your own head, and keep them only in those terms while you are among children.

After you have done that, you will find plenty Ideas for “activities” (a pedagogic magic-bullet word, which doesn’t mean a thing to children in the real world) flowing from your own imagination. Those are the only ones that count.

“Activities” created by people who have different representations of concepts than you do are not the right activities for you to share with others. You have to share what’s in your brain.

Yeah, it’s harder work for you, but it gets the only results that really count for the kids.

As you may know, the motto of Math Mojo is “Making Math Meaningful.”One of meaningful things about math, is that it is communication between humans about representing and understanding our world. Is is the humanity of the communication that makes education fun and meaningful. Any time we take that out, and defer to “curriculum” or “standards,” we are getting away from the deeper meaning of math.

Math with no meaning is, well, meaningless. Keep it human.

I hope this helped,

Hi - Ho!

Professor Homunculus

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