NURSERY 1 (born in 2017)

Patterning and comparative thinking are two strongly interrelated concepts. For instance, understanding similarities and differences is a fundamental cognitive process that allows children to identify patterns and make connections between things around them.

Patterns this lesson will focus on the observable properties of objects, such as shape and colour. Children will have to follow verbal instructions to identify and verbally describe objects (from a group of different objects) by 2 observable properties – i.e. “find me a (1) yellow (2) triangle”.

At this stage, many children may pick the wrong object because they are only able to focus on one attribute at a time.
Here, children will also learn to associate different body parts to their respective names i.e. knees, hands, feet, elbow, fingers & toes.
Subsequently, children are tasked to re-create given patterns, by rotating and arrange a set of dice to the correct faces and positions. Rather than just an activity to follow the pattern, your child would gain an understanding of how each face of a die might be different, depending on the perspective. This also provides a stepping stone transition towards mental visualization and rotation activities.

The ability to recognize patterns is an essential problem-solving skill that guides children to make predictions based on observations. Pattern awareness also helps children form some sense of order in everyday life, by considering the association / relationship between objects. Additionally, understanding pattern concepts can prepare children for learning of complex mathematical later on.

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NURSERY 2 (born in 2016)

In jigsaw puzzles, pieces interlock in a mosaic to form a picture/image when completed. Such puzzles are generally solved through heavily reliance on visual cues. Conversely, shape puzzles are solved by relating pieces to the physical attributes of the original shape.
Acknowledging how young children are much more familiar with the former, a gradual transitional approach will be employed. This lesson, your child will introduce to shape puzzles that still have the visual element of a jigsaw puzzle (containing a picture/image).

Children will be engaged to reconstruct the original square/triangle/circle shapes and be guided to verbally describe his/her observations during this process. Your child will gain a better appreciation for how every piece is different / unique; to identifying the position of puzzle pieces based on both visual and physical cues.

Using triangles as the building block, children will also be encouraged to form a range of other shapes, such as a square, rectangle, trapezium and parallelogram.

In contrast, children will also learn how a circle/rectangle/square shape can be divided into 2 (halves) and 4 (quarters) equal shares.
These activities seek to familiarize your child with the concept of shape composition and decomposition. Additionally, as your child works from both the detail orientated and big-picture perspectives, shape manipulation reinforces the idea of part-whole relations. This also doubles up as a precursor to area concepts, including the addition/subtraction properties of area.

Moreover, shape puzzles develop problem-solving skills and visual-spatial memory as he/she processes the sizes, colours and shapes of individual pieces, in an attempt to relate and arrange them accordingly in 2D space.

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KINDERGARTEN 1 (born in 2015)

Difficulties in counting and manipulating the cubes of a multi-cube 3D structure becomes especially prominent when children are represented with 2D illustrated formats of the multi-cube 3D structure, particularly in configurations which occludes certain cubes from view.
 
This can be attributed to the lack of the spatial structuring ability and the inability to coordinate and integrate the different perspectives of the structure to form a unified mental model. Therefore, some degree of stereoscopic vision will be needed to make sense of the whole 3D shape and form – to extrapolate data from its 2D representative.
 
At KUNO, we believe that this visual-spatial cognitive ability can be developed through consistent exposure to 3D modeling exercises. Children start with physical references, where they are encouraged to observe the structure from different perspectives, before attempting to form a unified mental model. Subsequently, they are challenged to construct 3D structures from more abstract representations (i.e. picture, built plan).
 
Even though not explicitly stated, this process of counting the total number of blocked used per 3D structure also introduces children to the underlying concept of volume and area. Activities also seek to reinforce the idea of part-part-whole relationship, as well as nurture both mental visualization and rotation capabilities.

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KINDERGARTEN 2 (born in 2014)

Activities this lesson seeks to reinforce the concept of shape decomposition and composition, through two topics
1) 3D figures and their corresponding 2D geometric nets; and 2) symmetry. In PSLE, these topics are also routinely tested and it is therefore important that mastery is developed from early childhood. 
 
Through this process, your child will also develop stronger spatial awareness, geometric intuition and mental visual capabilities. Additionally, he/she will acquire relevant knowledge and skills that would aid the learning and understanding of both geometrical and mathematical concepts in school.
 
3D figures and their 2D geometric nets
 
A 2D geometric net represents a template for constructing a physical 3D figure.
 
By manipulating 2D geometric nets to construct corresponding 3D figures, children will have the opportunity to explore the relationship between the two.
 
Your child will learn that the faces of 3D shapes are composed of 2D shapes, including rectangles, circles or triangles. A cylinder, for instance, is composed of 2 circle faces and 1 rolled-up rectangle face.
 
He/she will also discover how the size of one face in a 3D figure is dependent upon the sizes of the other faces in the same figure. Using the cylinder as an example, the circumference of a circle face would have the same length as the width of the rectangle face.
 
Symmetry
 
In term 1 lesson 4, children were taught to break down one larger shape (i.e. square & triangle) into smaller shapes through systematic halving.
 
This lesson, children do the reverse – to visualize and reconstruct a symmetric shape given one-half of the original image.
 
Rather than a direct copy of the halved image, symmetry is a pattern of reflection. Children will learn how to mentally flip the image 180 degrees along the line of symmetry.
 
For instance, a triangle shape, when reflected along the line of symmetry, can make a square or bigger triangle depending on how it was originally positioned.
 
These exercises can develop observational skills – to pay attention to details and make comparisons (of similarities and differences), which in turn will aid categorization.
 
Understanding symmetry can also build a strong foundation for perspective taking, to view things from the flipside.

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Next LESSON'S focus:
THINKING WITH WORDS