Notes on the theme of "Numbers in Life"

"Numbers" can be seen everywhere in children's lives. Children deal with numbers every day, and they represent different meanings in different situations. Recently, children have started many exploratory activities around "numbers in life", investigating and understanding the role of numbers, learning to read the clock, learning to plan time, and becoming the little masters of time...

1. Preliminary exploration: "Where are the numbers"

Before the theme activity "Interesting Numbers" was carried out, we prepared a "letter to parents" to let them understand the content of the theme and cooperate with their children to find the numbers. Understand what the numbers actually mean. Parents are very cooperative. They lead their children to look for various numbers at home and in the surrounding community, and explore the functions behind the numbers. Through purposeful observation and search, we have collected a wealth of digital information and physical objects with numbers in different places in life, such as phone numbers, numbers on license plates, prices on commodities, the number of floors in elevators, numbers on clocks, etc. The numbers on the tape measure, the page numbers of the books... share the children's real experience through the survey: numbers are everywhere in our lives, the numbers on the clock indicate time, the numbers on the tape measure represent different lengths, and the numbers on the calendar Representing different dates... Numbers are so powerful!

2. I am the little master of time

Complying with, rationally utilizing and arranging time is a very important advantage for becoming an outstanding primary school student. This can not only train children to become little masters of time, but more importantly, they can be little masters of their own time. This will make it easier for children to integrate into their primary school life.

In order to apply the experience to children’s lives, encourage them to plan their time simply and rationally when they go home. Before guiding the children to make evening plans, discuss with them what they will do after leaving the kindergarten at night. The children’s answers varied, but the form and content were basically the same:

“I will read for a while when I get home.”

“I will go to Take painting classes and dance classes.”

“I’ll have dinner when I get home.”

The children’s answers all described one thing they did in the evening. The children's answers were more consistent and they were able to make correct evening plans. I also guided the children to communicate with each other and explain clearly everything they did after leaving kindergarten until before going to bed.

Next, our evening plan began. The children made it very seriously, and made it in detail what they would do at what time.

3. Healthy Eating (Character Area)

Games are still the main activity for children, and they play new tricks in the rich and diverse activity area.

During the theme development process, children choose one of the common foods in life such as tea, coffee, yogurt, chocolate, biscuits and look for numbers on it. The children found many number signs, and the teacher used a statistical table to tally their findings. Young children are most interested in barcodes, production dates, and shelf life, and we discussed this in detail. For bar codes, children fully mobilize their existing experience and understand that: the number in the bar code is the ID card of the item; the bar code of each product is different; with the bar code, the salesperson in the supermarket can easily understand the price.

Children have some doubts about the production date and shelf life: Which is the production date and which is the shelf life? Taking into account the age characteristics of middle class children, I used the form of courseware to give a preliminary explanation: Generally speaking, the production date is on the top of the packaging box, expressed with Arabic numerals; the shelf life is on the back of the packaging box, both with Arabic numerals. It can also be represented by numbers in Chinese characters.

After the initial explanation, a game "Tidying Up the Supermarket" was created to allow children to sort out expired food and non-expired food according to date, and guide children to use this skill in role-playing games and with their parents. Going out shopping together.

4. Number-specific activities

In daily life, children will encounter numbers-related things everywhere. By seizing this educational opportunity, teachers can better help young children learn and understand numbers. We also use the "Weather Forecast" to record the date and temperature of the day, let the "Duty Students" count the number of people on duty that day, and use the "Natural Corner" to record the number of germination, flowering or leaves. A special wall is set up to display these statistical results so that children can correct their records and communicate with their peers at any time. From the macro to the micro, young children use numbers to solve practical problems in life scenes. They are proud of their abilities and tell their parents about their records when they go home every day, making the connection between numbers and life closer.

In real life, numbers are everywhere, and they are always with young children. Young children may have seen or come into contact with these numbers in their daily lives, but at this time they are often in a state of unconscious attention and most of them will not dig into the details of the numbers. Teachers should be keenly aware of children's concerns, naturally penetrate education into children's lives, and let children feel the magic of numbers in a subtle way.