Introducing Numerals

[Mum]

KL, Lappy and the BrillKids Team

Thank you for LM. My children and I love the new LM Cirriculum.

I started to show lessons from the cirriculum (not from the start as we have been doing math for a while now) 2 days ago in conjunction with my pretty much "by the book" Doman red dot numbers and math presets. My daughter was immediately impressed and said "Wow, that's different!". Tonight my son actually said "More" to math on the computer.    Now I am more confident of being able to ease him across to longer lessons and use the LM cirriculum in place of my presets.

I have noticed that the LM cirriculum's numeral lessons start on Day 96. To my thinking this is early:

seeing the Math lessons are still on subtraction,
compared to the Doman program, and
given Domanmon's explanation of the totally firm grasp children need to have on quantity to perform rapid calculations in their head.

While I understand that your cirriculum has only used the various early learning math concepts as a guide and does continue showing quantity in the lessons, I am hoping that you can share your explanation for introducing numerals at that stage.

Also, will Semester 2 of the LM cirriculum include teaching:

greater than and less than
equalities and inequalities
fractions, and/or

any other math concepts which are not possible for us to create in LM at this time?

Thank you

Mum

[Mum]

Can anyone else shed some light on the timing of introducing numerals to my son in about one months time if I switch over to the LM cirriculum. I am keen to use the cirriculum but am also concerned about confusing him or not having quantity cemented before then.

My son is certainly showing me that he is learning quantity, but his understanding in just one months time will fall far short of what Domanmom has shown us Hunter was capable of prior to introducing numerals.

I would be very grateful for any opinions/help.

Thank you.

[Questers]

Hi KL,

I would like to know too the rationale behind introducing numerals at an early stage in the LM curriculum...I am sure this would have been done after a lot of forethought...can you please share with us the same?

Thanks,
Questers

[KL]

First of all, please remember that there's really no hard and fast rules about any of this.  Doman introduces numerals later, Shichida apparently earlier, so does that mean one is right and one is wrong?  And the variance is much more if we consider others.

I do not wish to comment on curricula of others as we are not in their shoes and therefore not in a position to, and can only talk about our own.  In designing our curriculum, a lot of it is guided by our own personal feel and experience, and I stress, based on Little Math as the delivery platform, not any other tool or medium.

We decided to introduce numerals on Day 96 and we do not feel that it is early at all.  We believe this is an appropriate time to bring back the earlier numbers as a form of revision, except this time with a different twist. So this time, quantity is shown again, PLUS adding in an extra 'bit' of information to it, which is the numerals.

So we believe there is no risk of confusion, just like you don't confuse a child by showing him one picture of a dog one day and another picture of a dog another day.  You are simply telling your child that both those pictures are dogs.  In our case we make it a gradual shift where quantity is still shown in conjunction with the numerals, similar to how we gradually shift from lower case to upper case in Little Reader.

It's also one way to keep lessons fresh, and to avoid dragging out the entire curriculum longer than we believe necessary.  Therefore, we have gone to great lengths to introduce new things at spaced out intervals, obviously with a belief that it is neither too early nor too late, based on how we have structured the other lessons.

[Mum]

Thank you for your reply KL.

I particularly like your comparison to showing different pictures of dogs. I can now put some more thought into this topic with a different angle to consider.

Could you please help with the following:

Also, will Semester 2 of the LM cirriculum include teaching:

greater than and less than
equalities and inequalities
fractions, and/or

any other math concepts which are not possible for us to create in LM at this time?

Thank you.

[KL]

Also, will Semester 2 of the LM cirriculum include teaching:

greater than and less than
equalities and inequalities
fractions, and/or

any other math concepts which are not possible for us to create in LM at this time?

No, our curriculum does not currently include greater than/less than/inequalities, though we are considering changing this and squeezing it into the curriculum.  Unclear whether it would be put into Semester 1 or 2, or both.  if Semester 1, then you would get updates (most likely in time for when you reach those lesson days).  We will also have to upgrade the software to build in those features.

There are no plans to include fractions anytime soon, as this is a feature that's earmarked for version 2 (release schedule unclear, but most likely next year).

Other features not present in current LM v1.5 but will be in v2 are many. One of them is abacus.  As for the others, I'm afraid if I tell you, I'll have to kill you.

[Mum]

Wow! That all sounds math-nificent. 

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