Ask HN: Teach a 5-year-old math and science over the summer?

Because my young kids always got suspicious when I tried to “teach” them something, I found a way to weave it into real life. One kid would ask me for 7 Froot Loops, so I’d give them 4 and ask them how many I still owe them. Or we’d be out on a drive and I’d ask them if trees are alive. Then I would be adversarial with them: “if they’re alive, why don’t they move?” “What do they eat?” The adversarial thing works really well, depending on their personality. I’d get them to do all kinds of math stuff this way.

If you’re looking for a more structured approach, I counted marbles on a carpet with one kid for a while, every night. They put up with it but pretty much hated it. I could tell the learning wasn’t super deep. When I tried that with the second one, they pretty much rolled the marbles under the furniture.

What I’ve learned about kids is they are so different that a single approach may only be optimal for 1 in 5 of them (I made up that number). Which is why I wish I could home school them, because no teacher or school I’ve found can seem to customize their lesson plan enough.

A counterpoint: if you get your child far enough ahead, a teacher may not have time/resources to give extra content in kindergarten. This could be because the level other kids are at in that particular class, resources at the school, etc.

One result of this could be your child may be bored and could get into trouble and could result in them not enjoying school. I don't know your kid so obviously that is one path, there are many. If your school can recognize advancement and handle it then this is a moot point.

Just give them some legos, knex or similar toy which will help them intuit many things about mathematics without trying to pressure them to be a top student. Show them interesting books and documentaries about animals, plants, and insects. Parental pressure to succeed is the destroyer of passion and joy in learning. Let your kids be kids and they'll learn what they need to along the way. Are they really going to start learning any science and math to get a head start on in kindergarten anyway?

The Khan Academy Kids app is really well balanced - a logic exercise followed by a book about dump trucks, a counting game followed by a singalong. It worked for my 4 year old.

If you see some particular math/ science engagement I’ve found Magic School Bus (books / 90s show/ recent reboot )provides an excellent framing.

The Singapore Math Series helped my daughter rocket a few years ahead of her classmates (your mileage may vary here).

My take is that the biggest focus, if you want to give them a head start, should be on reading.

The most fundamental skill any elementary school child can learn is how to read. Every single thing they learn in school will at least benefit from a strong reading ability, and this goes for math and science as well.

The biggest place where young students fall down in math, is story problems, not the arithmetic itself. Being able to read a passage and correctly interpret what it is asking is far and away the most important skill a young child can acquire at that age.

Is it just me, or is it a little bizarre to give a 5 year old a head start on math and science? Why not just have fun with the kid?

5 might be a bit too young but ...

My 8-yo son HATES math. I know a lot of kids don't like it, but this kid has a visceral disdain for it. But I know the things (video games, media, etc) he does like and I've wanted to get better at game programming for awhile, so we set aside time to design a game he can play that - don't tell him - incorporates some of the topics on his teacher's lessons for the next month (which area available via a web portal).

His job is primarily to design characters and levels (on paper) and then I implement them. Then his job is to "test" the game. He knows there's math being injected into the game and it's very simple but this is all about the process. Suddenly he can show and tell his friends he's making a game with his friends and along the way he's getting more interested in programming.

This is just one idea. It's sneaky but seems to be working for us.

For math:

- buy a bunch of math manipulatives (number blocks, base 10 blocks, Cuisenaire rods)

- watch the TV show 'Numberblocks' on Netflix or BBC (there are ~50 episodes, and you can rewatch them)

- use books like Beast Academy 1A and 1B if your kid is ready

- Khan Academy Kids (free app)

- Dreambox (paid app: $150 for 10 years) if your kid is ready

I made a simple graphical web app to help my 5 year old (now just turned 8) understand basic arithmetic concepts, and it's been very successful. You can see a session of us working with it together at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3doY76KEVk . (note that I made a web cam button, so it will put the video of us behind the app itself, so I could screen capture the app and it shows me and her as well) The video is a full half hour (two sessions), and even if you just skip around it's pretty cool to watch how the concepts seem to click for her.

You can use it at https://pianop.ly/mathLesson/ and if anyone is interested I'll put an MIT license on it and put the code on github.

It started out with us using pennies laid out on the table, then when I realized how tedious it was, I started using GIMP, then when realizing how tedious that was, made a little app. This is the earlier version (first GIMP, then a cruder version the app) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VDn54vPNSk

I've found the highest success rate by adding on to what they're already interested in when I see an opportunity. Like when they point out an observation or ask a question, for example mixing paints and discovering new colors, or learning to count/measure/add missing building blocks to finish a wall.

My son is almost 6. He knows the alphabet and can read some words. He knows addition and substraction (with fingers) and how to count to 169. I plan to help him expand in all of those areas during the summer, but naturally (not with homework)

He likes puzzles and videogames. We made a couple Pico-8 games together. Lately he has been developing levels in Mario Maker 2. He builds legos. He enjoys going to the countryside and playing with rocks, sticks, bugs, etc. I think all those will help him appreciate math and sciences later. He has a piggy bank and he earns coins sometimes when he does good deeds. He loves counting them. I will try to do more of those during the summer, but mostly because he enjoys it.

I also intend for him to be around other children as much as he can during the summer, which he also likes. And he is missing some social practice because of the lockdown.

I started my oldest with doing puzzles (jigsaw) and logic-based games. He's now 8 and is very good in the math subjects. Language is less good.

For language I have him reading English-language books, that might have been a bad idea because it's his second language. He is "okay" at his native language.

His sister we did nothing with; her language skills are excellent in her native language, but she's not as good at Math as the oldest. We're not starting her reading English for at least another year.

The youngest, well, he is only starting to talk now. They take a little longer to start because they're dual language (Dutch/English).

Maybe Computer Science Unplugged would offer some inspiration? Teaching CS fundamentals without using a computer: https://www.csunplugged.org/en/at-home/

"Classic" version of the book with all the activities, also in PDF form: https://classic.csunplugged.org/books/

I would also recommend Elizabeth G. Hainstock's book "Teaching Montessori in the Home: The School Years" (and the first part, "The Pre-School Years", which is for children aged up to 5). IIRC, these books are from the early 1970s, but I was blown away by the clarity of the instructions, explanations and drawings. The School Years book is, obviously, aimed at somewhat older children, but it offers really interesting exercises and tools for teaching maths: https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Montessori-Home-School-Years...

Best of luck and have fun!

We’ve had amazing luck working with some inherited Cuisenaire rods (colored, sized rods). My 5yo and I are working through the Gattegno Mathematics book. It jumps straight into formula notation using the color names (2 white rods equals a red, as 2w = r), which has actually helped with writing and letter formation. I’ve been amazed how good the system is at introducing math concepts WITHOUT focusing on counting.

So on the point of maths, maybe you should break maths down like people would break a computer program down in order to teach programming?

What I mean by this, is that many maths symbols are like functions or constants, and once you know the rules for a language and its compiler you can code, the same goes for maths, except its a universal language all over the world and the compiler is the rules which is the same all over the world.

Thats why some teachers say if you are good at maths you will be good at programming.

So identify the functions, constants & rules a 5year old will be expected to learn, teach them those, repeat for the next year.

How hard can it it be?

There is a debate over whether people should be expected to learn to do the long hand calculations on paper in this day and age, but thats like teaching kids to bang their heads against a wall when there is no need for it, although I'm sure some hackers will jump in a say there is a need for it just like there is a need for working out binary in a memory register, although the later is a more common example.

Obviously there are a lot of tricks in maths which can also be taught.

I mostly just asked my now-six-year-old math questions at dinner, while driving around, and at other convenient times for me. Give them a treat of some kind when they get a few right. She's now in first grade and she can do multiplication, division, fractions, squares/square roots, and so on.

The treats mean that she will sometimes come up and say "Can I do math questions?" (because she wants to watch TV or get some other treat). I'll give her a series of random questions, and if she gets them right, she gets to watch TV.

On the science side of things, there are lots of fun project kits you can get. I found that they are a lot of work, but also worthwhile. I should probably do more of them.

You should also look into snap circuits electronics kids. The kids go absolutely nuts for those.

P.S. once they have the fundamentals, age-appropriate comic books are insanely good for teaching reading.

This might not be the case where you are, but a common structure for Kindergarten is play-based learning. Reading up on what that entails might be interesting, and give you some inspiration for the summer - http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/kindergarten/parents-guide-play-bas...

If you're okay with incorporating screens into the learning, Khan Academy is well structured and broken down into small manageable chunks. With a 5-year-old you would likely want to do it together. Another is https://www.tvokids.com which has all sorts of video and games content for pre-school age children.

Read: https://www.amazon.com/Math-Three-Seven-Mathematical-Prescho...

Lots of great examples/ideas/etc.

I would do some hands on activities to get them curious:

1. egg in water, slowly add salt till the egg floats 2. food coloring / oil / water 3. build a model rocket together then launch it 4. build a battery using a lemon, a zinc coated nail, and a copper nail 5. build a single diode radio 6. play hide and seek, it is a great way to teach them counting 7. make a small garden, plant something and have them tend to the plants 8. get a paper airplane book and make some paper airplanes together 9. get a copy of Anno's Math Games and teach them about patterns

Our 4yo loves doing "experiments":

(1) We put on safety glasses

(2) We wear latex gloves

(3) We write down what we're about to do, what we think is going to happen, and what actually happens

There's a whole genre of "home kitchen experiments for kids" books that we checked out from the library and read through and tried to pick a few.

Several are ambitious because they need some unusual reagents we didn't have in the household. But, you know it hardly matters what experiment you do as long as you're enacting the ritual and having fun doing it :)

Some favorite easy experiments:

* Mixing baking soda and vinegar

* Dissolving shredded red cabbage in boiling water, then using this indicator fluid to measure the relative pH of household stuff like pickle juice, vinegar, baking soda, etc

* Mixing solid carbon dioxide with water, soapy water, food coloring and soapy water (great when we needed to defrost the freezer and had a bunch of leftover dry ice)

* Mixing borax and glue

I have to admit that I did more of this in 2020 and a bit of 2021 when we were indoors a lot and not seeing too many people, and that once I taught the kid to read and once the weather was nice enough to go outside and do unstructured play / climbing, the formal instruction disguised as fun has kind of stalled. Right now he's really into going to the library, checking out books, carrying them to the playground, and reading them there, which I am fine with.

Some other fun things to try:

* Splitting light with a prism (large high-quality glass prisms are under $3 and under $10 on AliExpress, but buy a few as they break). Kids love seeing the rainbow on stuff. I could not quite figure out how to combine a rainbow back into a beam of white light.

* Talking about states of matter (solid/liquid/gas) and building a chart of different states of matter of different substances; also "Why Does the Sun Shine?" and "Why Does the Sun Really Shine?" because our kid loves having the secret knowledge that things can also be a plasma

* Attracting and repelling things with bar magnets; what's magnetic, what's not?

* I've trained my kids to yell "g sin theta!" when they roll down a steep ramp (pretty high compliance rate) and "I'm a pendulum!" when they're on a swing (they now love watching things swing back and forth). This is just for fun. When they're going fast/slow on a slide I've tried to remind them to think about things like how quickly things roll down a steep vs shallow hill, how friction slows them down on a slide and what makes them go faster, whether a longer pendulum goes faster or slower, whether two things of unequal weight take the same amount of time to fall when you drop them … I'm not sure it sticks but it's kind of fun

For math skills I've been working through some of the stuff in https://naturalmath.com/moebius-noodles/. The 4yo is now comfortable enough to start reading this on his own and ask to do experiments, which is nice. The authors argue that kids will get enough natural exposure to certain kinds of math skills (counting things and subitizing groups) that it's worth refocusing them on other fun insights (symmetry, finding like patterns, functions) that don't always get early emphasis.

* The 4yo loves building "function machines" (let's draw a machine that makes things twice as big!) and enjoys making sample inputs and outputs, plus chaining them together.

* My kid also really likes "doing workbooks" (Highlights and Brain Quest make Pre-K workbooks which he loves playing with) and also enjoyed it when I printed out some addition worksheets and showed him how to use a number line to add numbers. He then ... wrote his own worksheets? ("3 + 5 = ____"). OK kid. We also did a bit of work with a number line to visualize addition, then talked about subtraction, but I didn't want to go too far down this road because there's plenty of it coming in school.

It's also worth a visit to a local science museum to see if they have any demos that might be interesting.

Take him to a planetarium or dinosaur museum

If you are looking at online things try https://learn.khanacademy.org/khan-academy-kids/ or https://www.abcya.com/

> will be starting kindergarten in the fall get a head start learning math and science

Let me guess, this is your first kid?

I had my 4 year old do this and it allowed her to skip a grade:

https://beastacademy.com/books/1A

We have been following Singapore math for our kid since he was a little over five years old. We've found the concepts in this book series practical and workbooks enjoyable for the kid.

No book, activities, etc. needed. Just let them play and explore. They are learning about math and many other things all the time.

In my experience, choose the most loud, Novell, fast activity out there.

Keeping their attention is the biggest hurdle. Small bit-size demonstrations.

Prodigy Game: Perfectly suitable for a 5 year old with a parent there helping. They learn math while playing a fun RPG game.

For book ideas, the Fairy Math Mother is a great resource. [0]

I highly recommend getting a set of Tiny Polka Dot cards. [1] It comes with lots of ideas for games but it's also open-ended — we've had a lot of fun coming up with our own games to play with the cards. It's extra fun when you mix them in with toys; e.g. build a race track out of blocks and then draw cards to move your characters along the track to see who can get to the end first.

There's a BBC show called Numberblocks that my 5yo loves. I made an exception to my no-cartoons policy for this one and I'm really glad I did. It presents a whole slew of mathematical concepts in a very visual way. The full episodes are available on Youtube if you know where to look — beware that there are a ton of compilation videos that just show snippets which is frustrating. But if you go to the "Red Level" "Orange Level" etc. playlists, you'll get the full episodes. [2] We also got a set of buildable Numberblocks characters and he enjoys retelling the episodes with them.

There's a great blog called Talking Math with Your Kids that's full of little transcripts of conversations the blogger has had with his kids. (You can also pay a few bucks to get the ebook which is a little more organized.) The blog has good tips for how to ask questions and follow-up questions that give kids a chance to explore and express their thinking on different topics, as well as ideas for situations where you might initiate a mathematical conversation. [3] This blog sparked a #tmwyk hashtag on Twitter which I enjoy, since it's just parents posting their own little snippets of conversation. [4]

I haven't found a lot of resources for little kids that focus on computing concepts, so I just make up my own stories, some of which I've documented on my blog like "Pickle and the Boolean Logic Baby Gate" [5] and "Pickle and the Closet of Functions" [6]

I also recommend having some manipulatives on hand that can help with figuring out the answer to questions that come up. My son is very curious about math and will often ask us questions (the other day it was "what's four to the four?"). I can show him some things with paper and pencil, but he hasn't done much multiplication yet so after we figured out that 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 = 16 x 16, we got out the base ten set [7] to figure out how many you have when you have sixteen 16s. He carefully counted out 16 copies of a 10 rod plus 6 ones and then I showed him how we can exchange 10 unit cubes for a 10 rod, and 10 ten rods for a hundred square and he was able to figure out the answer from there.

We haven't done as much with science, but we like to go to the library and I'll find books in the non-fiction kids section that are relevant to his interests. E.g. he started asking a bunch of questions about sound and how it travels, so I found a library book that had some simple experiments we could do at home together.

[0] https://fairymathmother.com/ [1] https://mathforlove.com/games/tiny-polka-dot/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC_0LqcEsu8&list=PL9swKX1Pvi... [3] https://talkingmathwithkids.com/_blog/ [4] https://twitter.com/search?q=%23tmwyk&src=typed_query [5] https://bancosparenting.wordpress.com/2021/05/08/pickle-and-... [6] https://bancosparenting.wordpress.com/2022/03/13/pickle-and-... [7] https://www.amazon.com/hand2mind-Complete-Manipulatives-Kind...

I wrote an app for my daughters years ago using Adobe Air and it was quite successful in the early days of the app store when it was easy to load such apps. Was really useful for my daughters as they have always excelled at math. May not be suitable for a 5 year old, but depends on the kid and parent. The idea is to provide a simple interface for learning single digit arithmetic "patterns".

The objective was to create a UI that let kids relax re: feeling the need to always find the right answer. They just need to "imagine" (right mind) the right answer and click on the answer presented. Over time associative memory response leads them to recognize the patterns for single digit arithmetic, and the "arithmetic" part of math becomes instantaneous. That makes things like factoring fractions (an early hurdle) quite a lot easier because no real thought is involved in seeing the common denominator, etc. (See the chart of one of my daughter's progress in the video below to see how she learned associatively.)

After mastering single digit arithmetic, the app allows kids to move on to seeing how the "algorithmic" approach for multi digit problems is easy. (Note: the reliance on the algo approach is very much WRONG in the current "common core" approach to math in the USA. I acknowledge the "additional understanding" provided by the common core, but I do not see the algo/memory approach as the evil many common core folks see it as.)

I knew some older kids who really hated math (middle school), and found they really struggled when asked "What is 6 x 9 ??" or any other simple arithmetic problem. Finger counting and taking 10-20 seconds for just one step in the process of doing multi-digit multiplication or division is a real hindrance which definitely keeps them from progressing/appreciating math.

Some of the older kids did work though my App, and it had a very, very positive effect. Some sampling issues re: who I knew so YMMV.

I ported the app to a pure HTML/JS app, and hope to soon release it as an Github open source app that can be run locally as a PWA. Unfortunately I am way behind getting this done. Happy to share the code via my private Github account if anyone wants to help with this relatively trivial task.

Right now it runs fine, of course, in a browser with the exception of Safari because Apple is pretty aggressive about not supporting Indexeddb for local storage. Just be sure to be aware of how all the browsers will automatically delete local storage is an app is not used within N days. Any Chrome-based browser should be fine. (The fix for Webkit is not hard as it involves a very longterm bug Apple has never address, so well understood. Again, just have not had time to get to it.)

From the early Air app (current app is very similar although there are some differences e.g. graphs). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK3wzeGVRQ4

MathFlashApp (will be active for a few more months until Google shuts down its free Workspace users): www.mathflashapp.com

HTH, nsc