=

Ia and a friend were out in the garden again today, spotting changes in the garden, such as new growth on bushes, the first tiny unfurlings of new leaves. They also took clipboards and drew some of what they saw. Then we used simple rulers to measure the heights of some of the bulb shoots. After that they came in and made pictures using coloured paper and tissue paper.
We also did some maths today. When the boys were about 5 I had a balance scale, which I used to help demonstrate equality of number. I don't have that now, so I had to resort to other tactics today. I drew an "="sign in the middle of a table top whiteboard. Then I placed five cubes on either side of the = sign, in various groupings, and kept asking the girls to check whether the number was the same on each side of the = sign.
Next I used dates on 3 plates. I put two plates on one side of the = sign and one plate on the other. Then I arranged dates, sometimes equally, sometimes not, asking the girls "If I give this number of dates to you,(on the left of the sign) and this to you,(on the right of the sign) is that fair/equal?" In this way they could understand that it was only fair, or equal, if the number of dates on each side of the = sign was the same. I continued in the same way, then getting them to draw numbers of sweets, and using the + sign to group sweets on the left of the = sign. I hope inshAllah that this could help them understand the meaning of = sign, as after all this is only a symbol. It only aquires meaning because we attribute that meaning to it. As adults we just take its meaning for granted as we are so used to it. I wonder what the little ones make of it when they encounter it at first?
According to John Holt, a lot of confusion in maths comes from not understanding the underlying concepts and meanings that we express in the codes of numbers and symbols. I've expressed my own understanding of what I read of his work there. Hope I understood right!