Thank you so much for your ideas
- I will definately look into them. I am so busy as my husband is in the airforce and works away a lot therefore I never seem to get 5mins to research this kind of stuff. I definately want to tap into the right brain learning more and it is much better to go on recommendation I feel.
I, like you, am learning as much as the children when it comes to little musician!! My children like the music program the best so I think playing music in the background would work for them.
I do think that whilst the children are so young & receptive to facts that I will try and get the basic maths facts internalised. Teachers are tied by the curriculum and have to develop conceptual understanding but sometimes I feel that this is at the expense of KIRFs (key instant recall facts). Some of our local schools are starting to concentrate on KIRFs and I really think it's a good thing because as the children progress and the maths gets more complicated not knowing these facts will slow everything down. There is something called Conker Maths
www.conkermaths.org/ which is based on the English National numeracy strategy and gives lots of free practice games for KIRFs that I will start using.
Since having my own children I have started researching early years and am so disappointed with the early years curriculum here - everything is 'Play' centred and has to be the child's choice!!! Well if I gave my child a choice about cleaning her teeth, eating her veggies etc you can guess what would happen. In reception my child had 100% choice and spent a year either outside or in the roleplay area. Learning was very limited as there were no adults in those areas taking her learning forward ( the adults were in the maths and writing areas) so my daughter became de-skilled by school and I have constantly had to top her up! In my experience maths will not just happen in play as well as it will through carefully prepared activities, with some adult guidance/input. THis is the same for Letters and sounds! There is a letters and sounds program used by schools, which is excellent but it depends how effectively each establishment implements it. It can be found in DFES archives and my daughter loves the activities. The attitude in our local schools is not to 'pressurise' young chn. etc etc but I am a big believer that a letter game can be just as much fun if conducted in the right way as any other play activity.
I am excited to look into your suggestions - sometimes I wish I was homeschooling!
* Did you use tweedlewink when your children were younger? Would it be necessary to do a course or do you think you can pick it up as you go along?
Digg
