Overview:

Cottage B is a Reggio based center, meaning educators approach teaching with a project approach.  Projects come from the interests of the children and can last from a few days to a few months.

While keeping technology in mind, I observed the children to see where their interests were.  One day I taught a lesson that dealt with numbers.  In this lesson the children played Hokey Pokey, but had different number stickers on their body parts.  They were so engaged and excited more about the numbers than the dancing.   Since there was such a great response from this activity, I decided that using technology to help the children learn more about numbers would be a great project for the children. 

Goals for the project:  I wanted the children to view the computer as not just a thing that they can play on.  My hope is that through this MITTEN experience, the children will be more comfortable representing their ideas on the computer.  I also hope that some of the children that are shy around technology and opt more for paper and pencil will begin to feel comfort in the technology around them.

Numbers All Around Us!

The purpose of this lesson was to expose these young children to numbers through a variety of means.

• Lesson Plan 1
  At the beginning of the project, we took small groups on a number walk around the campus.  The children were to look for things that they could count and look for numbers.  When they found an object they were allowed to take a picture with the digital camera (with the assistance of a teacher).  As a revisiting activity, we watched as a class a Microsoft Power Point presentation that contained all of the pictures that the children had taken.  The children were encouraged to talk about their pictures and the other children’s too.
• Lesson Plan 2
  The next step was to practice creating numbers on the computer.  We used Kid Pix and Microsoft Paint to draw numbers with the mouse.  The children were asked to represent the numbers anyway they would like.  Some of the children drew the numbers with the mouse and others drew a certain amount of objects (one to one correspondence) for their number.
• Lesson Plan 3
  After working with Kid Pix for a couple of weeks, the children were ready to create a classroom book.  We used the Stamp program in Kid Pix and created numbers by stamping an image over and over again in the shape of a number.  This book was burned on to a disk for the children to view and there is also a hard copy in the classroom for the children to look at.
• Capturing the children’s understanding of numbers through the semester with a digital camera was also an important part of this project.  The children in this group are very young so there is only so much technology that the can directly use.  Digital cameras are great because the children love to see the instant result.  Many times the children would take pictures of their friends discovering numbers with assistance of a teacher.
• Children love playing with the computer.  Throughout the project the children were encouraged to play mathematical games on the computer.  There were many games that the Cottage already had, but parents brought in some new games for the children to explore.  Some of the games we used regularly included Winnie The Pooh Math and Jump Start Preschool.  Both of these had some great activities for the children to explore to help them learn their numbers and work on one to one correspondence.

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