Whole Numbers

My whole teaching career I have been teaching children whole numbers and last night, I realised just how many things that are related to whole numbers such as
(i) cordinal number
(ii) ordinal number (in space/ in time)
(iii) nominal number
(iv) measurement number

As teachers, we have always taught children whole numbers but usually we do not have in mind the things that we are actually teach the children. Like Dr Yeap always said, "children must be exposed to play." I think, as teachers, when we enjoy teaching the children, we do not actually realised the many, many things that we teach the children. Often than not, we teach children more than what is required; beyond our lesson plans and way way beyond our classrooms.

Another take-away from last night's class was realizing the difference between 'crutch' and 'scaffold'. It made me realised on my teaching methods and the ways that I can improve on. Dr Yeap mentioned that even without the scaffold, the building can still stand strong. And if the teacher employed the 'crutch' method, the child cannot function without it. After last night's lesson, I am more aware of how I 'scaffold' the children.

Last take-away that I got from the class was, "We cannot count things that have different nouns." For say, we cannot give a basket of apples and asked children to count the number of oranges in the basket. It makes perfect sense, right? Well, I just wished that my teachers explained this 'theory' to me when I was in school...it would definitely make things EASIER for me!

The problems that we did in class was very interesting. We did counting of 'How many people are going to St Ives?', counting of beans, the number of beans that Jack got and the 51 eggs shared by three people.
I enjoyed all the activities, especially the beans where we did subtraction and the 10 frames (counting the number of beans Jack got).

It is so interesting that most probably, I would introduce these activities to the children. And hope that the children will enjoy these activities as much as I did!