Number qualities: the power of One

As with form drawing, I was feeling guilty about falling "behind" in math, too. Even though S knows his numbers, I wanted to start him off with a block on the qualities of numbers. I reread Marsha Johnson's helpful article about this, and... off we went!

I wasn't too confident in my storytelling ability, but over dinner, did my best to retell Marsha's tale of embarking on a journey and ending up at the feet of an old woman who asked "What is one?" To my surprise, I had S's full attention -- the story speaks for itself, I guess, even when delivered by a rank novice.

S, never one to want to wait for a surprise, impatiently asked me how the story continued. "You'll find out tomorrow" didn't satisfy him. What finally did the trick was that I told him I needed to find out the answer myself, and that it would be given to my overnight as I slept!

Form drawing: a spoonful of "sugar" helps the medicine go down...

S and I made our first attempt at form drawing about a week ago. We walked the form, traced it in the air, traced it on our board, etc. Our session was nothing remarkable.

Feeling guilty about "falling behind" with the schedule I'd sketched out for our "school year," we capitalized on T's naptime this afternoon to give form drawing another go. I set up our easel, selected a variation of the form we'd done already (two letter "C's" facing each other), and drew this on the board. To make our drawing more special, we took out our blue beeswax crayon!

We began with a (to be very honest) humdrum story to go with the form. And, we traced and drew. Then, another story came to mind, a short one about a bear who'd eaten a lot of ice cream, and therefore had a round tummy. His bear friend was in the same situation.

So, now we were working with two ice-cream-sated bear tummies. What a difference! Suddenly, S had much more interest in drawing the form. The amazing thing was that the form visibly improved over our various iterations of it.

And, once his interest waned with the form I'd presented, he veered off onto his own path, happily creating his own "form" to draw and repeat. Once his board was full of this new form, he then -- on his own accord -- drew a border for it with the side of his chalk.