our neighborhood map with Logo

museum herakleidon presented a robot in our kindergarten in Athens. A bee was moving in a panel of 15x15 cm squares, using programming language Logo, to reach a bee hive.

we used the bee to visit our favorite places in our neighbourhood. We cut squares of 15x15 cm and drew our places of interest in our neighbourhood the we placed them, eith their labels, in a panel, constructing a map of our neighbourhood.

we all programmed the bee to visit our favorite places at our neighbourhood.

Hara Rentzelou, kindergarten teacher in Greece

Mathematical concepts; In order for the children to conceive the length and proportion we play various games:
Handling of objects is the key to knowledge, as Piaget says. Observation and comparisons come afterwards.
I would like to share some of my projects with you, just because they helped children to understand and enjoy mathematics.

Height
We measure ourselves against the wall. We have created a measure with centimeters and we put our names in the centimeters we reach.

First we measure ourselves barefooted, and we see our height.
After some months we measure ourselves and put the new results. The difference we take home in a piece of colored tape.

This activity triggers a lot of comparisons and observations.(why younger children were taller than older, why some gained more hight than others e.tc.)

riddles with animals

Summer is coming and children need to do pleasant and creative things. You can play riddles with your kindergarten child , as I am sure you do.Here is a paper they can play with compiling riddles to show you:

Ps the illustrations are done by Mark Weinstein

We rescue the mice

The cocept, I borrowed from the book: mouse count,by Ellen Stoll Walsh. Its about a snake who is hungry and collect mice in a jar, meanwhile he gets tricked by a mouse and gets away, for a while. The mice must plan their escape, but before we read the plan, we make our own plans and compare them with the writer's. Here you will find some of our plans for escape:

Here is the plan that the writer gives:

our gardens are growing

It is October and in the provinces of Greece our gardens are growing. Children are helping their grandparents or parents, so they watch the growing proccess. We decided to record this growing proccess. Here is the vegs in October. December we are going to record its growth further.

mathematical concepts in kindergarten

In order for the children to conceive the length and proportion we play various games:
Handling of objects is the key to knowledge, as Piaget says. Observation and comparisons come afterwards.
I would like to share some of my projects with you, just because they helped children to understand and enjoy mathematics.
fractios
In order for the children to understand fractions (I mean the half , the quarter), we apply certain routines: First we have at hand the recipe for play dough, every time we want to make some, we find the ingredients and we measure the quantities(which means they are familiar with the concept of 1/2, etc.
Children enjoy it and they learn about quantities, at the same time.
Origami,I found helps a lot too in understanding fractions .
We organize some handicrafts that involve folding shapes. We make birds, butterflies, babies in prams and various other applications that help them to get a sense of the ½ and ¼ portions.
e.g. ¼ of a circle is the beak of a bird. ½ is its body and in another size the foliage.

height

We measure ourselves against the wall. We have created a measure with centimeters and we put our names in the centimeters we reach.
First we measure ourselves barefooted, and we see our height.
After some months we measure ourselves and put the new results. The difference we take home in a piece of colored tape.
This activity triggers a lot of comparisons and observations.

length

First I cut small pieces (of one, two and three centimeters, different colors).
The children are asked to put as many pieces of tapes as they think are appropriate to reach the line, at ten centimeters(the first piece that I set.
At the end they mention how many pieces of tape they put together in order to reach the line (at ten centimeters). We discuss why is different for everyone, and find reasons and observe situations.

pizza

We discuss about the pizzas and what sort of pizzas we like.
I propose to make the pizza we like, with the ingredients we like. Sometimes I have a list of the ingredients with names and photos, and they make their own pizza, in paper (writting the ingredients underneath, if they like).

At the end we decide to share the pizza with three or one of our friends.We have to share it in equal pieces, and usually we succeed.

this project is a verification of the concept of fragments

At the end we decide to share the pizza with three or one of our friends.
We have to share it in equal pieces, and usually we succeed.