Prepare Our Children.

"Preschool is about preparing children to learn, e.g. we prepare children to learn addition, subtraction; not teaching them the concept yet. It's about preparing the child to handle the content." -Dr Yeap, 19 July 2012


When Dr Yeap made this point, I pricked up my ears. So as an early childhood educator, my job is to prepare the children to handle the content of higher education. How? How can I prepare a child's mind for the demands of higher mathematics- multiplication, division, fractions- besides by infusing his milk with plenty of DHA, making sure he gets his daily dose of omega three fatty acids, ensuring he gets a solid breakfast in the mornings so his brain is fueled and powered-up to go, and employing a tutor to teach him the basics of these concepts ahead of the school syllabus? 


The answer comes in the form of a math problem:


Find a way to turn this trapezoid into a rectangle with the same area.

After giving us some time to figure it out and putting up a few of the possible solutions some of us figured out, Mr Yeap used the following example to convey his point:

Cut the trapezoid in half this way

Place the pieces together this way

After the pieces were placed together to form a rectangle, Mr Yeap then asked us if we could find the area of the rectangle based on the measurements provided for the trapezoid, and how we could do it. Seeing that sides 'a' and 'b' of the trapezoid were still the same in the rectangle, we quickly identified them. The height of the trapezoid, 'h', was halved to form the rectangle and thus we derived the breath of the rectangle as '1/2h'. Therefore, the area of the trapezoid was 1/2h(a+b), based on the area of the rectangle. And isn't this very formula, Mr Yeap pointed out, the formula for finding the area of a trapezoid that we were taught back in school? I had my EUREKA! moment right there and then. YES IT WAS AND OH NOW I SEE, that's how it is derived! I was totally converted to 'Yeap-emathetics'. This is what visualization is all about- being able to see things that are difficult to see, learning to view a problems from multiple perspectives. This is the strategy of using prior knowledge to figure out solutions to problems- in action! Children try to adjust problems into manageable parts and then use what they already know to solve them. This is also how Math becomes understood. 

This is what it means by preparing childrens' minds to learn and to extend their own learning: giving them practice in breaking down problems into simpler portions that they can manage with the knowledge that they have. Instead of blindly committing working and solutions to memory which  leaves children stumped when they encounter challenges, we teach them the strategy of adopting multiple perspectives which will help them to attempt these problems and to develop a 'can-do' and'will-try' attitude in any challenge they encounter in life.