Joanne Lee is a playful woman by nature,
so it comes as no surprise that this developmental psychologist
and find ways to incorporate fun and games to her research.
Lee's work focuses on cognitive development
and early childhood education. In the Child Language and Math Lab
at Wilfrid Laurier University,
Lee studies developmental changes in numeracy and geometry in young children.
Initially interested in psycholinguistics, she turned
her attention to mathematics after watching her
16-month-old son playing with numbers.
He was counting from one to ten, and the moment after ten
he looked at me with his innocent eyes, like "Mom, what's next? What is after ten?"
After her experience with her son,
Lee was determined to find out just how much parents were engaging in math
activities with their children. Her research has shown that parents and
caregivers generally focus their activities
around literacy and naming rather than math.
As parents with young kids, we often forget,
we neglect the math part. We always,
you know, we always engage in, "Oh, this is a bird."
"This is a car."
But we forgot to actually incorporate math talk.
Her findings also demonstrate that toddlers understand
certain mathematical concepts better than we give them credit for.
When presented with the option of one cookie verses to cookies,
most infants will choose two, demonstrating
an understanding of more and less.
With this knowledge, Lee and her collaborator, Donna Kotsopoulos,
have designed LittleCounters, an early numeracy program
for children between one and four years old.
Its purpose is to help parents integrate counting and mathematical concepts
into their daily activities to nurture their child's developing brain.
LittleCounters, basically our philosophy is,
it's a math program to help caregivers, and parents,
to instill math talk and math activity
using very simple things: toys, games, songs, books,
and even cheerios.
We often forget that fingers are actually devision cubes
Most of the time, when a child fails it's all the parent's fault, right?
"Oh you didn't do that," "I didn't do enough."
So we want to get all of this out; we want to empower parents.
And research studies have shown, parents actually have no clue.
They actually indicated that they have no clue, they really don't know what to do
to introduce math game or math play into their daily lives.
But LittleCounters actually gives them tips and pointers.
Lee encourages parents to engage their children in purposeful play early on
and to choose activities that will help children as young as 12 months old
acquire a strong foundation in math. The LittleCounter sessions
introduce parents to useful games that revolve around math.
These activities teach parents to go beyond simple rote counting
to initiate concepts such as
cardinality: how many in a set in total
ordinality: which number comes 1st 2nd 3rd,
and the internal number line: counting from the child's left to right.
She stresses the importance of observations,
so parents can assess their child's skill level.
If they see their child understands the concept of three,
they can move on to five, then ten, and so on.
Lee hopes to expand her research beyond the Kitchener-Waterloo area.
She and Kotsopoulos will bring LittleCounters to Ontario Early Years Centres,
where the program will be introduced to First Nations communities and low-income families.
She also hopes to train early childhood educators across Canada.
I hope all parents, especially those who have math phobia,
or have math anxiety, discover that math is actually fun.
Learning math in a very fun manner could help to lay the foundation for your children's first few years of life.