Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Kindergarten homework ... wth does this mean???

Boy, am I glad DS5 can count so I don't have to pay attention to the instructions that sometimes come home as his Kinder homework! (the teacher told us at the curriculum night that if we find some things too basic, we do NOT have to do them. So I'm taking her word for it!)

The worksheets he brings home have instruction along these lines ... "understand that the last number name said tells the number of objects counted. The number of objects is the same regardless of their arrangement or the order in which they are counted."

home activity ... "use a box of blocks or other toys. Have your child count 4 blocks and put them in the box. Have your child move the blocks around and ask if there are still 4 blocks in the box. Ask your child to check by counting. Repeat the activity with 5 blocks."

Seriously? I have no experience with NT kids ... do they actually have to follow all these steps to learn basic counting? Can't they just show them one of the fun Leapfrog videos and be done with it??? I can see why my kid is bored beyond reasonable if that's the kind of math activities they do at school??? The instructions make my head spin! ... and I've already seen even worse than this in the last 2 weeks. Yikes!

When I saw the homework last week (counting 2 and 3 objects) I gave him a different worksheet (with some basic addition to freshen up his old skills) and sent that to school with a note that I hope she doesn't mind I give him more challenging work at times ... with the explanation that I don't want him to start acting up in class if he finds the work too easy. Haven't heard anything back. Not sure if that means she liked the idea or not? Was worth a try

It was shocking to me as well last year. And I can tell you I am equally shocked about the homework so far in first....

One of my dds also learns this way - it doesn't mean she isn't smart, it's just what she needs to conceptualize numbers.

polarbear

I really wish they'd simplify the instructions to basic words so if the kids really need to do all this, they would actually be able to read the instructions themselves (once they learn to read) rather than have someone else read it for them and translate into "normal" language. DS5 doesn't get why he should even think there would be any difference in different arrangements. 5 is FIVE ... what are they talking about??? lol

1111 ... that does NOT give me much hope!

I worked on videotaped developmental psych studies in the 80s; one of them was around kids grasping the idea of transformation based on Piaget's theories. Pouring water from a wide beaker into a tall one would get nt kids up to a certain age to say there was now more water. Same thing with clay, object permanence, counting, etc. I had as hard a time then understanding how a kid could think the amount of water changed, as they did understanding that it didn't change. Some would argue against the value of a child going to school before they entered Piaget's "Conrete Operations" phase.

i remember being boggled by Pre-K math last year for DD. when we got to the teacher conference in november, i remember them telling me they were working on counting to ten. DD was counting everything in sight before she was ONE, so i was legitimately confused. i knew she was early at most things... but i was concerned the teachers must be underestimating the kids: could there really be a class full of school-age kids who had never even thought of counting?

needless to say, the conference did not go well.

I have been a parent volunteer in my child's K class last year - they did all these "moving manipulatives around" to recheck if the numbers remained the same. My son's class was a "gifted" class - but they have to cover all the state mandated curriculum before moving onto challenging stuff. So, most kids would giggle and say words like "baby stuff" and "silly" while doing these activities. But they all did it because it was a fun diversion from coloring, cutting and pasting!
During Halloween last year, the teacher sent home a similar "themed" homework asking parents to do such an exercise with 6 different kinds of candy. I sent in a note that we do not eat candy in our house and hence were going to do a different hands on math activity involving lego blocks at home!

Some kids come hard wired with this concept. If you've only parented one of these kids, it is sometimes startling to encounter a child that's not solid on these concepts.

For kids who dive into math without really grasping this concept, math becomes a series of mysterious steps. I'm glad schools work to teach these concepts, but I do wish they'd do something else for the kids who have had the concept down since their time in the womb.

Maybe I can offer some anecdotal insight.

When I was five, I had a piece of cheese. I ripped it into several pieces and then analyzed my reaction to whether or not the amount of cheese had changed.

I knew that I had the same amount of cheese that I had started with. But I felt like I had more. Why is that? I wondered. I decided that even though the amount of cheese I had was the same, it would take me longer to eat it because I would have to pick up each individual piece. This process would take longer than just picking up the one original piece and taking big bites out of it. The increased time required to eat it made it feel like more cheese. Also, the cheese was now spread out over a larger area, again, making it look like more cheese (in retrospect, to a five-year-old, anyway).

I was satisfied with this explanation, starting eating the cheese, and turned my attention back to Scooby Doo.

I suspect that most kids wouldn't think about this idea on their own or can't make those distinctions at that age. It's very easy to just go with the feeling, especially for a very young child (but adults also do this).

Though...that doesn't excuse the technician in the lab where my friend did a postdoc. When she left for lunch one day, the PI was sitting with him and explaining that diluting his DNA mixture didn't give him more DNA and that he therefore couldn't use the diluted mixture to run more gels. The guy didn't get it. He was apparently fixated on part of the protocol that said use 50 microliters and was ignoring the bit that said of a mixture of concentration x.

When my friend got back from lunch, they were still having the same conversation and the guy still didn't get it.