NURSERY 1 (born in 2017)

This week, children will be introduced to the concept of positive correlation through an understanding of the relationship between size and quantity (e.g. the bigger the bear, the more food it will eat). Making positive correlation involves an integration of skills such as comparison-making, ordering and one-to-one correspondence making.

Hence, to do this, your child first needs to identify and compare the attributes between 3 objects within each of the two distinct sets. Next, your child will have to arrange objects within each set in meaningful sequence (of increasing / decreasing order). Lastly, match objects from one set to corresponding objects in the other set logically.

Therefore, one possible conclusion would be to match a larger-sized bear (size) to a bigger bowl of food (quantity), since papa bear is expected to have a larger appetite than baby (logic).

During this process, children will be trained to use comparative (bigger/smaller than, more/less than) and superlative adjectives (biggest/smallest, most/least), exercising and strengthening oral communication capabilities.
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Understanding relationships between objects (through correlation) improves your child’s ability to integrate and organize information in a logical way, make inferences and recognize patterns. For instance, information regarding the attributes of one object can be used to interpolate/extrapolate information of another related object.

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NURSERY 2 (born in 2016)

Young children tend to think that big objects are always heavy and small objects are always light. However, they will soon discover that size and weight do not always correlate.

Children will learn through first-hand experience, the possibility for smaller items to be heavier than larger items vice versa.
Here, we introduce the balancing scale - a simple measuring instrument believed to be one of the best tools for explaining the concept of relative weight. It provides a quick and definitive test to compare the relative weights between two objects.

During this process, children will also be encouraged to make predictions as to which object is heavier/lighter and justify their answer.

Additionally, mathematical concepts (addition and subtraction) will be incorporated. For example, 10 identical counters are placed on the left side and 3 identical counters are placed on the right side of the balancing scale. Then, your child will learn to calculate the number of counters that is required to be taken out/ added in to balance both sides of the scale; and to calculate the minimum number of counters that has to be added to the right side to make it heavier than the left. Through this exercise, children will gain a better understanding of relationships (between variables); specifically, how quantity correlates (positively) with weight.

 

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KINDERGARTEN 1 (born in 2015)

At this stage, children would have learnt to compare between objects, based on a single attribute (i.e. size, quantity, weight and length) and order them accordingly in ascending or descending sequence.

This week, we will reinforce on the use of positional words (i.e. biggest, smallest) and the different ways of describing the same position (i.e. if there are 5 boxes of different sizes, the second biggest box is also the third smallest box). Additionally, your child will learn to relate ordering to numbering (i.e. First -> 1st, Second -> 2nd etc.)

More importantly, your child will learn the concept of positive correlation, which is the relationship between two variables (attributes) that increase or decrease, in tandem. For instance, your child will need to relate the increase in flag pole length to the increase in flag size. If both sets of objects have already been serialized, then the association can be quickly made. However, if both sets of items are not serialized, then the task becomes more challenging as children will first need to mentally order and serialize both object sets (flag and pole) independently, before matching the associated pair together through one-to-one correspondence.

As such, this lesson will develop your child’s observational and comparative ability to recognize patterns/associations, which in turn helps to organize and integrate knowledge, formulate ideas and understand the world around them.

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KINDERGARTEN 2 (born in 2014)

This lesson will focus on the concepts of positive correlations and reversibility.

Positive correlation is a relationship between two variables in which both variables either increase or decrease in tandem.
Having an awareness of such a relationship develops observational and comparative skills to match/relate different categories together. It helps children organize and integrate knowledge, form ideas and understand the world around them.
One example would be the relationship between body size and belt length. Larger people tend to require longer belts vice versa. Another example would be the sweetness of a drink and the amount of sugar/water used.

On the other hand, reversibility involves mentally manipulating information – such as reversing the sequence of events or the order of relationships between categories, to make better sense of the situation and make logical predictions. Mental reversibility is particularly applicable when carrying out deductive reasoning for hypothetical situations, especially if events cannot be directly observed.  For instance, your child will have to observe the amount of water left in the different glasses, to deduce which of these glasses has had more water drunk from, assuming each (identical) glass starts with off fully filled. In the second activity, your child will have to deduce the burning time for candles, given the lengths of the burnt candles.

Reversibility is relevant to both daily experiences and academic success. It provides a framework for logic/reasoning to flow bi-bidirectionally (top-down and bottom-up) and plays a critical role in your child’s acquisition of abstract math and science concepts in primary school. Cognitive development in this area is also marked by reduced ego-centrism, enabling children to think from the perspective of others beyond their own.


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Next LESSON'S focus:
THINKING WITH SPATIAL RELATIONS