Day 5

Today I learned when Dr Yeap told us that it is important to have a variation in the materials we use to teach math concepts to children. These include proportionate and non-proportionate materials. He also mentioned that its better to use proportionate materials for early learners instead of using non-proportionate materials. Therefore, it's better to use natural based things instead of unnatural materials when teaching early learners. Visual learning processes into a child’s brain better than anything. For an instance, when we teach the "pair" concept, utilize things that come in pairs eg: (a pair of socks, a pair of shoes, a pair of gloves), when we teach the "dozen" concept, use things that come in dozens (a dozen of eggs, a dozen of oranges and so forth) and when teaching a bundle of 10 items, use things that come in a bundle of 10 (a bundle of 10 satay sticks or a bundle of 10 straws).
Utilizing all these natural concrete objects most certainly make the learning fun, fruitful and effective.

Today, the problems were really fun to solve! Especially when we work together as a group. Connecting dots! What fun it was! Firstly we had to connect 4 dots to create polygons, which we later used to figure out the area in square units. The next task was we had to put in 5 sequential numbers into 5 grids that were arranged in the form of a cross. The numbers should be placed in such a way that when you add the 3 numbers in horizontal direction and the 3 numbers in vertical direction, it gives the same answer. Wow.... I was like thinking to myself..... I wish I had Dr Yeap as my math teacher long time ago. I would have had a better perception about it and tried to better in maths in my school days.. sigh

Well I have learned a lot from Dr Yeap and am thankful for it.

 

;)