Breakthrough Junior Challenge

Running out of ideas for remote learning and activities to keep the kids engaged and busy? Check out the Breakthrough Junior Challenge… Khan Academy and the Breakthrough Junior Challenge have the following video contest for your child to enter. What Does Your Child Have to do? Create a video that explains a challenging concept in

Digital Learning for Young Children – Math Skills

When the boys were younger, I used apps and online math games to support their math skills development. Admittedly, it was a little experimental since we couldn’t be sure how effective digital learning was. Most importantly, we didn’t know how well it could translate to physical math learning. The following study takes a closer look

Prodigy Math – RPG that Helps Kids Learn Math

There is a misconception pervasive in our understanding of Math. I’ve often heard it said, “I’m not a numbers person” or “Math is just no my subject”. It becomes that subject to get through and be discarded at first opportunity. Math is like anything else in life that we do. Everyone starts at different levels

Maths Mastery – Transforming Maths Education

There’s this new method of teaching Maths at school that we’re learning about called Maths Mastery. I think the first question that often comes up whenever there is a change is this: why the new system? What was wrong with the old way of doing things and why do we need to change it? And

Teaching Stories: Learning Science and Math Through Stories

When G1 was little, it was all I could do to get him to read fiction because he was only interested in non-fiction books. Now that I’ve so successfully converted him to fiction, encouraging him to read the occasional non-fiction book is like making rocks bleed. Thankfully, a number of authors have found ways to

Reading List: On STEM, History and the Story of the World

It’s been a while since we added general knowledge books to the collection of books we have at home, so I’ve been looking into a few series to add to G1’s reading list that he might enjoy. The following books came highly recommended. The Story of Science In the three-book The Story of Science series,

Let’s Celebrate Math Awareness Month this April

Yes, I know – it’s half way through Math Awareness Month already. I had some technical issues with the website which prevented me from adding any new posts and it took me ages to fix because I didn’t know what I was doing. The good news is that I now know how to migrate a blog to

How to Help Children Develop Spatial Reasoning Skills

Spatial reasoning skills are important. Sure. We know that. They also help children do better in maths. In a recent study, researchers found that babies’ spatial reasoning predicts later math skills: Spatial reasoning measured in infancy predicts how children do at math at four years of age, finds a new study. It provides the earliest documented

The Scoop on the Legendary Singapore Maths Method

There has been a lot of media about the legendary maths from Singapore so we figured it was time to take a closer look at this program called Singapore Maths (or Singapore Math, as it is known in the U.S.). What is it and why the fuss over it? What is Singapore Maths? Before it

STEM Maker Workshop: Be a Maker

I’ve been trying to sign G1 up for a STEM Maker Workshop for some time now but the timing never seemed to work out for us until now. The goal has always been to extend his experiences beyond school with activities that add to his schooling experience rather than simply replicate them with more of