Happy Spring! Here is the Math Vitamin for the Week.
As spring arrives and we turn to study growth, change, and transformation, the science experiences we offer lend themselves to discussions of sequencing over time. Giving children experiences to process life science sequences (by ordering stages of growth and change) also provides opportunities to teach and reinforce ordinal numbers.
In the examples below, children are invited to look closely and carefully in order to sequence:
The sprouting of a pea
The sprouting of a bean
The life cycle of a butterfly
Once children have ordered the pictorial representations, they are invited to label numerically each stage of change. The numeral cards depict the ordinal numbers, which with a bit of explicit teaching can often be read independently by young children.
Once children have sequenced the cards and numbers, they are asked to tell the story from beginning to end, using each ordinal number -“First there was an egg. Second, it hatched into a larva. Third, it grew into a caterpillar. . . .”
Happy Spring!