TSBVI Coffee Hour
The Importance of Early Numeracy
05-03-2021

>> Kaycee: Hello, everyone. Welcome. We'll get started in just a couple of minutes. While you wait, if you want to go ahead and set your chat from "all panelists," change it to "all panelists and attendees," that way everyone can see what you say in the chat. Again, we'll get started in just a couple of minutes. While you're waiting, you can set your chat from "all panelists" to "all panelists and attendees." As always, we love to see where everybody is tuning in from, if you want to put that in the chat while we're waiting. 

>> Debra: Eastern Oregon. 

>> Kaycee: That sounds lovely. I bet it's nice and cool there. Not so hot. 

>> Debra: Unlike here. 

>> Kaycee: Portland, South Carolina, Michigan. 

>> Debra: Pendleton. 

>> How gorgeous. 

>> Kaycee: I think it's 87 here today. Yucky and humid. 

>> Kathi: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It's already hot and awful here. 

>> Kaycee: Austin, Washington -- 

>> Debra: New Mexico. 

>> Kathi: Kate, thanks a lot. It's actually 90 here. 

>> Kaycee: Houston. Houston's probably got even more humidity than we do. Maine. Angela is here from Grand Prairie. More Oregon. Oh, lots of Oregon today. We're glad that you're all here. I'll go ahead and get us started with some announcements so I can turn it over and get it started today. If you have a question or a comment while our presenters are speaking today, please put that in the chat box and make sure again that your chat is set to "all panelists and attendees." Your microphones and cameras are automatically muted so you don't need to worry about that. The handout for today's session will be shared in the chat for immediate viewing and will also be available for later viewing along with the recording of this and past Coffee Hour sessions are shared through a link on our Coffee Hour page, tsbvi.edu/coffeehour. Once you're on the page, scroll down to the list of sessions where it says visit the new TSBVI outreach Coffee Hour archives. That will take you to recordings, handouts, transcripts, and chat information. To get your CEUs, respond to the evaluation e-mailed to you from our registration website, escWorks, so enter the code given at the end of the session and the CEU certificate will automatically generate upon completion of that evaluation. There's no opening code, only a closing code and it will be given at the end of today's presentation. We'll stop the presentation at 3:55 to give you your code and announcements. I'm happy to introduce today's presenters to you. Debbie Reynolds, Renee Ellis, and Kathi Garza. 

>> Renee: Is that Keegan? 

>> No. 

>> Debra: I don't know where that sound is coming from. 

>> Renee: Welcome, you guys. Today is The Importance of Early Numeracy brought to you by the same folks who brought you literacy for little ones. So you get us again. The rationale for us doing this is that we feel like early math is just as important as early literacy and I think a lot of times we don't necessarily pay as much attention to numeracy and math kinds of things because we are often really, really focused on reading and writing. And the conversation we had as we were putting this little presentation together was exactly that. It flows so nicely with early literacy, with reading, with emergent literacy so today we felt like another component to kind of visit with you guys about is numeracy in math. So those skills that are needed to develop numeracy in the early literacy skills are really interwoven. If you have come to any of our chats, we talked about concept development, language, and all that stuff and it's just -- it kind of snowballs and it's been fun to put this together. Today is just an introduction. We sort of tried to put it together so there would be some activities and some suggestions for helping families and teachers. We're going to get started. There we go. What is numeracy? It's just basically the ability to understand and work with numbers and to apply math concepts across all areas of a child's life. And the word that stands out to me is "concepts" because we spend a lot of time talking about concept development when we did our literacy workshops and stuff. And so it really is all about math and concepts. I think we think -- when we think of numeracy we think about numbers and that's, I don't think, necessarily the case. It kind of is across all areas and so it's concept development. It's spatial, it's problem solving all that kind of stuff. It's basically a term that is going to be with the kiddo throughout the rest of their life and the skills that they need to learn to be a good happy functional adult. And so the question is, you know, why do we need to teach early numeracy, and what we know from kiddos who have visual impairment, tactile learners need specially designed instruction for numeracy just like they do for literacy. It's a lot about access. It's about organization, you know, how are you going to help that little guy or that older kid know where things are in the room so that they can work on those numeracy things. It begins way before formal schooling and for me that's about helping parents understand that the things that they do and the routines in the house, that language that they use when they're playing with their child or cooking or doing whatever, all begins at home, just like the early literacy part does. It strengthens throughout early childhood in those day-to-day activities, like I was just mentioning, and it's including play. I am -- my soap box is kids need to play and my other soap box is developmentally-appropriate practice. I don't think you can go wrong with playing with a kid and counting and adding and taking away and putting things in a line and , you know, having them try to figure out maybe which one got added or which one got taken away, as long as it's sort of developmentally appropriate of where that kid is. Children under the age of 5 really kind of absorb all this stuff. Toddlers will sort stuff out the wazoo without having any kind of instruction at all. Some of this really comes naturally to kids and they think it's fun but we need to be there to make sure we supplement that. It's also about kiddos learning to problem solve. So just like early emergent literacy and phonetics and phonemic awareness, math concepts and numeracy are huge predictor for later success for little kids' lives. So the better they are with the math stuff, the better they're going to do in school. I'm trying to think what else I wanted to say about that. I think the other point I wanted to make was that just like we try to engineer literacy-rich environments, we need to try really hard to help parents and classroom teachers provide a numeracy-rich environment. How is that kid going to act? What are they going to be able to get their hands on? How can they manipulate it? Can they reach it? All of those types of things. So that's why we're going to teach early numeracy and why we're going to make sure that we're going to focus in on that and sort of incorporate it into some of the language and math and early reading and writing. That's all I got to say about that. For now. 

>> Debra: Okay. So we decided, as we were putting this presentation together, that it would be a really good idea to point out what our state guidelines say for kindergarten and also to explain to other people who are not in the State of Texas that y'all also most likely have state pre-kindergarten guidelines as well and that you should try to become familiar with those because we are teaching those kids from, you know, zero to whenever they leave us in their early adulthood. But there are pre-K guidelines probably for every single state in the U.S. And our state we also have something called infant, toddler, and 3-year-old learning guidelines. For those of you who don't know that and you live in Texas, if you Google something called "little Texans big futures" those infant, toddler, and 3-year-old learning guidelines are in that document. We also have something -- oh, good. Kathi's holding that up. We also have -- and it's wonderful because it gives you what's expected but it also gives you some teacher activities and some family activities in that little Texans big futures publication. We also have, in the State of Texas, something called early childhood outcomes. So, again, TVIs need to be familiar with what are in those -- all those documents, not just the pre-K guidelines but the other infant-toddler guidelines as well. I am assuming -- I did not not look up every state who was represented here. I did not look up all of y'all's guidelines but I'm fairly sure that they exist. So what our guidelines tell us is that the core of any early education mathematics curriculum needs to focus on developing young children's ability to problem solve. Renee already talked about that. You know, make sure that they don't just take everything for granted and that you give them some problems to solve and not just give them everything, you know, hand it on a silver platter but that you do, you know, create some problem-solving situations for them. The second bullet says developing the capacity to ask thoughtful questions. What this tells me is that we've got to spark their curiosity and have them, you know, be curious about the world and be curious about the mathematics, things that are occurring in their world. And the last bullet says recognizing problems in their environment throughout the entire school day. As we all know, young children know when someone else gets more cookies than they do. If that's, you know, they're recognizing those environmental -- those problems that are happening in their lives in the environment throughout their school day and then they can go back to asking those thoughtful questions like why do Kathi and Renee get more cookies than I did? That is not okay. So we know they're recognizing those problems throughout the entire day in their lives. A little bit more about the pre-K guidelines. They also tell us that the curriculum should focus on using mathematical reasoning with familiar materials in their classroom. We've got to make sure that the things in their classroom for our little guys are also real objects. And uses concrete materials that are developmentally appropriate that they can manipulate and handle and taste and feel and play with and real objects really are important for our kiddos in building those mathematical concepts. Incorporating math concepts -- the last bullet says incorporating math concepts and instruction throughout the entire preschool day. What the early guidelines tell us too is that math instruction does not just happen during a specific time of the day. You're going to have math class. Well, that doesn't happen. So what we really need to make sure is that it's a natural part of every single solitary day that our kids have. That you can do it during art, you can do it during block play. You know, in your art project how many buttons am I going to put on this picture or if you do it during block play, how tall is this block structure, how wide, how long, deep. And also during developmentally activities I'm going to brush my teeth while somebody counts to 20 or button three buttons on my shirt. Just making sure that we incorporate it in their natural environments because it just lends itself. We talked in literacy for little ones how those concepts are just everywhere and everything you do with them throughout the day lends itself that instruction to developing those concepts. Math is especially -- that's especially true for math as well. Okay. Kathi, do you want to talk about the word cloud? 

>> Kathi: Yeah, so we're going to do a word cloud. And I totally for the last three slides have been like don't forget to unmute yourself when it's your turn. And I totally forgot to unmute myself when it's my turn. It's May. I should be used to this. So we're going to do a word cloud and what this is, if it works the way it's supposed to -- I say this every time and one of these days it might not. But you're going to go to menti.com, and Kathi is going to put the direct link in the chat for us. You can enter the code 13818574. If you click the link from the chat it will be on your browser. You're going to enter up to five words of what are the foundational skills for early numeracy. What do you think the foundational skills for early literacy are. And we're going to -- I'm sorry. Early numeracy. And I'm going to pull up the word cloud on my list. Oh, I'm going to switch slides so you're not peeking at what we think here. And I'm going to bring this up and see if you guys go and enter your words, then we should be able to see a word cloud generate very soon. Oh, counting. Oh, I saw somebody enter "sorting" in the chat. That's great. Comparison. Oh, counting must have been entered quite a few times because it's getting bigger and bigger. One to one correspondence, ooh. One to one correspondence against. 

>> Matching. 

>> Kathi: Oh, my gosh. This is making my eye balls go crazy. 

>> Debra: This is great. 

>> Kathi: Comparison, shapes. That is something, Debra, I was thinking about when you were talking about the art. My son is in kinder and a lot of his art, one of the first things they talked about in art, they talked about the elements in art and using forms and shapes with art drawings and sketches was a big thing. He was talking about a variety of different shapes and was not even in technical math class. Look at all these answers. This is so cool! 

>> Debra: Someone in the chat also put filling and dumping. That's awesome. Filling up containers and dumping them out. 

>> Kathi: You get one gold star with five points on it. Sizes and shapes, lengths, drawing, let's see, measurement. Oh, that's good. Patterns. Oh, somebody said patterns in here. A couple of people, I think 

>> Debra: I'm so excited 

>> Kathi: I know. Number identification. What does that word -- more or less. 

>> Somebody put in there inquiry. It's that curiosity and wanting to compare and learn more. I think that's a great word. 

>> Kathi: Okay. You guys are seriously -- Kaycee, you need to document this. Oh, no. Somebody says I'm not seeing any of the answers. Am I not sharing? I still should be sharing. Kaycee needs to document this as the best word cloud group ever. 

>> Debra: Ever. 

>> Kathi: This is a really nice word cloud. All right. 

>> Debra: Somebody just put in music, clapping, singing. You're my star, Dawn. 

>> Kathi: These are so good. 

>> Debra: All right. That was awesome. Thank y'all so much. 

>> Kathi: Okay. Let me figure out how to get out of this and go back to where we are. Okay. Does that look okay, guys? 

>> Debra: Uh-huh. So what we did, as we were trying to figure out, oh my gosh, what are the important things that we've got to include for early numeracy and we came up with these five things that are pretty much encompassing of everything y'all just listed on the word cloud. And when we were writing the numeracy at a glance book, we decided that we needed to do some research and figure out what early numeracy skills need to be in place before you can do math and you can do, you know, work on the Nemeth Code. And these are sort of the recurring things that kept coming up and they are pattern recognition and creation. Somebody mentioned that. Sorting and classifying, yes, good job. Numbers and operations. Geometry and spatial sense and measurement. So what we have to think about when we think about all this is that, you know, we're talking about numeracy today but language is huge. Language is important for numeracy development for describing, labeling shapes and numbers for spatial relationships, for directional words, comparative words, descriptive words, time words, and for measurements so we've got to make sure that we pair language and numeracy and make sure that we don't just split them off into separate corners. When we think about numbers and operations we're thinking about operations conceptually. We're not going to give them a problem that says one plus one equals two at this point in time. And we're going to be doing it with real objects that are familiar to them in their environment. So what we're going to finish with the rest of our time doing is we are going to jump into each of these five categories and we're going to give you a definition of what that means, what does it mean pattern recognition and creation. And then we're going to give you activity ideas for you to do and for the families to do. And those -- frequently you can do the family activities and the family can do your activities. It's not like you can't jump over to the other category but what we wanted to give you enough activity ideas to kind of get you started. 

>> Kathi: And to share with those, you know, ESC teachers as well, for them in the classroom about how can they turn what they're doing in their, you know, their kind of mandated curriculum scheduled, formal instruction-type activities that is really beneficial to our kiddos too. Right, Debra? 

>> Debra: Yes. 

>> Kathi: All right. 

>> Debra: We're going to start with patterns and pattern recognition and creation includes knowledge about specifically repeated sequences of objects, of pictures, of numbers, of letters, of sounds, of actions or events. That's why I was so excited a while ago when somebody put clapping and stomping or something. 

>> Kathi: Music. 

>> Debra: What I used to do in my preschool classroom is we would do a jump, clap, jump, clap and, you know, just to get their juices flowing. But to get them to understand that things happen in a sequence. You know, what comes next after you clap? You jump. What comes next after you jump? You clap. So we just wanted -- I worked a lot on those kinds of sequences because these kids are probably very motor driven as well, so I put in some of those motor activities for those patterns. You know, almost every single solitary thing we do in life follows a pattern. You get up in the morning and sometimes you go to work, sometimes you don't. And then around noon, lunch happens. And then you do the rest of your work for the afternoon and then around 6:00, 5:00 dinnertime happens. So we are all very routinized in almost everything we do follows a pattern so we need to help kids understand that too. It's not just those made up patterns that we create for them like the jump, clap, jump, clap but everything in life has a pattern and understanding patterns helps children make predictions about what's going to come next in their lives. So what we wanted to do, put in the chat what are some patterns that you help your students with in their environments. So let's just take a couple of minutes to look at for you to think about what patterns you use and you teach your kiddos. The other thing we have to think about for patterns is traffic lights, you know, when they're older. Traffic lights come in, you know, green, yellow, red. Green, yellow, red and you know when something's turning a different color -- except some people run those red lights. What's going to be coming next. Schedules, calendars, daily-living skills. They all kind of happen in a sequence, in a pattern. Okay. Are we getting anything in the chat? 

>> Kathi: We got color and texture. And then talking about the banana, banana meat ball song from Go Noodle. 

>> Debra: Calendar. 

>> Kathi: More calendar. 

>> Renee: Well, you know, back to that calendar thing, that also helps with some of those behavior kinds of things because if you know that predictability, you know what's next. You know that can help kids kind of become, you know, sort of space centered and calmer. It's math, it's social stuff. It's all of that. 

>> Debra: And somebody put snack in. I love that too. Especially during snack do you open your drink first and then you have your food? How is that even the snack is probably sequenced. Snack is probably going to be happening at a certain time of the day but a snack could also be in the same sequence. 

>> Kathi: We'll keep an eye on that, Debra. 

>> Debra: Let's move along. Like I was telling you a minute ago, what we did is we tried to -- we made a T-chart and we tried to make some activity ideas that you can take and do tomorrow. And so here with the families and those teachers you can do nursery rhymes. You can do songs with movement. Predictable daily routines and building patterns with food, which of course is my favorite. Love patterns with food. First I'm going to eat the raisin and I'm going to eat the peanut. Those are things that y'all can do as TVIs and calms as well but we wanted to make sure those are some family activities. So teachers, what we can do using real objects for building patterns, using patterns within our activities. And several of you already have said that calendar systems is also a very, very good way for us to organize our lives, for them to organize their lives and for them to know the predictability. First comes PE, then comes language arts, then comes something and something throughout the whole day so they will know what's going to happen next and they will be prepared for it. So there are our pattern activities. 

>> Kathi: Great. So we're going to move on to talking about sorting and classifying. It includes recognizing how things are the same or how they're different, which we acknowledged in our group as we were planning this that that is a super, super challenging concept for kids to get that same and different. But also it encompasses separating objects into groups by their attributes or features. So that can include size, shape, color, or texture. And so sorting and classifying is not just same and different. So it's important to not get focused too much at an early, early age on asking kids is this the same or are these things different. Really when you're getting started with like we were talking about the pre-K guidelines and even looking at the knowledge and skills for those early grades like kinder, it's more about sorting by attribute and size -- or attributes like size, shape, color, texture. So understanding how to sort and classify can help children develop their logical reasoning skills like how do these things fit together. When they learn to match and compare and sort objects, their knowledge of relationships can further develop. And an understanding of relationships gives children a strong foundation for future learning and math. So if you can understand the relationships between objects or between people as you're sorting and classifying or connecting like certain people to certain activities, then you can later translate those, that knowledge of relationships into numbers and reasoning and problem solving and geometry and all of those mathy-looking things that start happening in schools. We typically think about sorting and classifying, as I was talking about, we want to begin with items that are really, really different from each other. Objects or words. And move into the more similar ones, just like kids kind of start with their gross motor abilities and they kind of hone it down into their fine motor, so we start with the bigger picture for, you know, sighted kids a lot of that centers around color. For our kids it might be more like talking about different sorting by texture or sorting by size. You know, big and small can be hard too because it can be kind of relative. And so it's important to, you know, to really kind of make sure that what you're sorting is very different. So some activities that we consider when we're talking about sorting for families might be putting away your toys. If you're anything like my house, everything has its bucket and I even said just this morning, well, we would probably know where that very small specific toy was if it was in the right bucket. If it's not then mommy has to look through every bucket until we find it. Sorting laundry or silverware can be chores for kids, into designated spaces. Exploring or comparing items with each other. Infusing that descriptive language when you're doing that in that activity and also throughout the day. Talking about the attributes that different items or objects encounter. Even the more abstract things like, you know, hot and cold you can start to infuse some of that language in there. Oh, the refrigerator is cold or this came from the refrigerator so it's cold. Organization systems for teachers, setting up organization systems within the classroom. You know, to kind of designate this is where everybody who needs to go to the bathroom needs to stand and wait or this is where everybody who is ready for circle time sits. And you're doing some sorting on a larger scale with that. And, of course, teachers can create sorting games with objects, with textures, with sizes, with shapes or with words. And this is where I think that consultation approach is helpful because you can look at what some of the activities that the teachers have in their centers and help make those meaningful and appropriate for our VI students . 

>> Debra: Kathi, can I make a comment really quickly? 

>> Kathi: Absolutely. 

>> Debra: Holly Nash, I am stealing that kebab idea. I don't know if you saw the kebab idea in the chat but she said for patterning make a kebab of a fruit and marshmallow. 

>> Kathi: Breakfast on a stick is what we called it in summer programs. The kids would come back every year and say are we going to make breakfast on a stick? We would do that. They would read their recipe and then they would make their own and they always did them in a pattern, yes. 

>> Debra: I love it. 

>> Kathi: So in thinking about numbers and operations we were talking about how that includes many of the things that you guys were saying in the word cloud. Rote counting, one to one correspondence, counting on. So starting at one number and then continuing on in the sequence. Adding to and taking away from sets. And then also of course numeral identification. When kiddos understand about numbers and operations, it's an underlying foundation for future math skill development. You have to be able to understand the way that numbers are related and connect to each other in order to be able to do more complex math. You know, then when we think about rote counting, a lot of kids we sing counting songs and do those things but then fine tuning it into that one to one correspondence. I think we've all encountered those kiddos who can sing their ABCs or count to 20 and then you ask them to count objects and they're not really sure what you're wanting them to do, so they just kind of start counting without moving. So some of the activities that we identified for this in the family side of the chart would include singing counting songs with them, setting the table. Because that's kind of that one to one. Everybody gets one plate. Everybody gets one napkin. Some of us need more than one. You know, but everybody gets one. Counting in your daily activities. I'm going to -- I still do this. My son is six and I'm like I'm going to wash your hair for ten seconds because at least if I give him a count then there's a little bit less of a fight. But you can count in daily activities. Cooking and playtime really lend themselves to doing things with numbers and counting and even later on we're going to put one scoop of raisins in the trail mix and we're going to put one, maybe two scoops of M&M's because everybody likes those better. Adding and identifying numbers in the environment -- that appear in the environment is really important. I know for kiddos who are more tactile learners, finding opportunities for them to encounter and discover the environmental Braille that is available can help. But even within just, you know, in restaurants. I don't know. I just feel like kids always really enjoyed looking at those table numbers and so we used to like to go to restaurants that had those little number tents where they would bring you your food, so that's an opportunity. For teachers we talked about infusing how -- we acknowledged that a lot of number work is infused into circle time. If you're looking at a calendar or counting how many days you've been in school or counting every third person is going to get a turn to share or we're going to pull three popsicle sticks for you to share about your weekend. Also, passing out snacks or materials just really emphasizes that one to one. Counting on in school activities, so adding one more, counting on one more. Building sets of objects into designated groups of how many, and then reading and/or making number books can be another way that teachers can support young children in developing early numeracy skills. Let's see, and I think it's Renee. 

>> Renee: I think it's me. 

>> Kathi: Yeah, it is. 

>> Renee: One of the things -- I think we had five or six listed. And so we were talking a lot about geometry and spatial sense. For me that kind of goes almost like directly into orientation and where you are in space and I'm not an O and M, I know a couple of them but I think when you're talking about traffic crossings and parallel lines, you need to have some sense of geometry and I think back to the word cloud and I'm watching that thing turn around and go off in all kinds of different ways and areas and it's like geometry and spatial sense is a huge piece of early numeracy and it has direct ties to fractions and algebra later on. Making sure that our kids have those motor skills that we talked about in the literacy part so they know where their body is in space and what it looks like when you hold your arms straight out, and that makes a 90-degree area and how that looks and feels. It's just that sense of where you are in relation to everything. And I think it's fun. I have a hard time with geometry. I don't do well with three dimensional planes or I couldn't, you know, play like 3-D chess but some of the basic skills are, you know, there that we use. So some of the things that we came up to sort of help parents and teachers out with some activities are for families, exploring and naming shapes in everyday environment. And that is using as many real shapes as you can. So maybe you go into the kitchen and you find all the round lids for every pot and then you can match them up and now you've got a little one to one correspondence and you get to compare, you know, size and shape and the sound it makes. You know, there's a paper towel. Well, that's a tube. Well, the toilet paper holder is a tube as well. And then you can do some, you know, motor activities around those kinds of things using directional and positional language. I think somebody mentioned that right off the bat in the chat. That's a huge, huge piece of geometry and where you are in space, and using that language for that. And I'm a big fan of play, big movement. Obstacle courses. If y'all had seen that video that we did, it's little kids in Holland or wherever they are and they're moving from tub to tub. You could turn that obstacle course into something where they have to hop or they jump or there's a pattern. And then movement songs. When I saw early childhood ESCE we did tons and tons of songs and movement. Like Debra was talking about, we jumped and clapped and hopped. For teachers, matching, sorting, and naming real objects by shape. Making sure those kids have the real objects, the triangle, the block from the block center that has the wooden circles or the rectangles and they can stack them and they can figure out if they put a ball on top of a triangle it's not going to stay there. That's problem solving. Making shapes using various materials. Man, that's the best spot to get in with the art teacher and come up with all kinds of modified things for your kids to use. Tongue depressors or toothpicks or whatever. Letting them get their hands on Crayolas and pencils and markers and trace around their body on the floor. That's a great one. You can put something around it so it has texture and you can hold it up and say this is how tall you are. There's all kinds of fun activities you can do. And, again for teachers, those movement songs and games. When I think about movement songs and games I want to make sure that my students understand what's going on and you're going to maybe have to help the teacher help that student. So remember the hand over hand, working with those little guys from behind and helping them move in space sort of in a more natural way instead of moving them through space, do it co-actively so the child understands what that movement is about and where they are. So the next thing we're going to talk about I think is measurements, if I remember correctly. This refers to finding and comparing objects, height, length, weight. You know, fat, short, skinny, tall. It's all about concepts and about time and area and volume. You know, it goes back to who's got the bigger pile of ice cream between Kathi and Renee and Debra, because volume is an important thing when it comes to things like that. So a few of the things that we can do to help little guys with measurement, help the families and the teachers, I think cooking is about the best way you can teach measurement because you got a great thing at the end to have. You can eat it. And then it's all that weight and sifting and all the fine motor stuff and the stirring. So simple cooking activities, again, whatever that age range of that child works out to be, you know, I don't think you want to be in there frying eggs with a 2-year-old but pouring and scooping and dumping things in there and giving them the language while you're working with them is just really a fun, easy way to work on measurements. 

>> Kathi: You know, Renee, cracking eggs is the best things to do with cooking because you typically add the egg and then you have to take out the shell that inevitably gets in there with young kids and so you're getting to do both of those things. 

>> Renee: That's very true. And it's a whole lot more fun than just putting stuff in and taking it out. There is a purpose behind it. Any time that you can infuse an activity with something meaningful for that child, you just can't go wrong. And so many times I think our kids hear what's going on but they don't really get their hands involved in it. And if you aren't letting them explore it and learn about texture and how stuff is hot and cold and what it sounds like when you're mixing it, let alone metal versus spoon on metal, it makes all the difference in the world. And for teachers, just being able to help that child compare objects by their length, their weight, their size. You can do it in a classroom. Have them stand next to each other and see who is taller and who is shorter. Non-standard units of measurement I think is a blast. You can have everybody measure by their hands. How many hands is it to the Crayola in front of you? How many giant steps is it over to the water fountain? You know, silly stuff that kids are going to think is really fun but they're going to remember there's another way to measure. I was making a chicken coop this last weekend and sort of doing the measurement like I think that will work and then cutting it and finding out a tape measure would have been way better. And then I think I said lining up by height order. But in looking at a bunch of articles when we were getting ready to do this, I thought it was really interesting that a couple of times I read that preschool are not necessarily teaching mathematics anymore and they're not focused on math like they are on literacy, which is kind of what we sort of ran into. It's like 58 seconds or something of math and everything else is reading and language arts. I think it's a huge piece that we maybe overlooked that we can help our students especially beef up for later on. And that's all I have to say about that. 

>> Debra: Well, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You know, the activity ideas that we listed on the PowerPoint slides, we really, really had to control ourselves because, you know, there were so many activity ideas and we thought, oh, we can't put 14 on there. But we could have. But this really and truly -- no, Kathi wouldn't let me. This really and truly is the tip of the iceberg and hopefully we will expand on this and we will make some more activity ideas for you guys to access as well. I really love some of the comments that, you know, you can do all this measuring and scooping and counting and spatial concepts and water play and in bathtime and in cooking. I mean, it is awesome. Someone just -- Toni wrote in there there's a cute book called Measuring Penny where a little girl measures things like her dog, Penny, with non-standard measurements. That's one of the state standards -- I assume it still is in Texas -- using non-standard. How many hands high is my dog or how many hands, you know, finger stretches does it take me to get to that crayon. Those non-standard units of measure are the precursors and beginning of measurement as well. Again, tip of the iceberg. There are 1,000 other activities out there and maybe we can compile them all into one big resource. 

>> Kathi: Debra, I don't mean to go rogue but that makes me think of what Renee was saying and what you've been saying, what we've all been saying. We're talking about how all of these numeracy skills are really -- and what Kate said in the chat. It's really just fine tuning your language in your play. Being engaged. But the other thing I think too that can be a little bit of a trap that I've seen when I've supported teachers who are working with students on specific skills is that sometimes we get so excited about putting as many skills as we can into a lesson and then you kind of lose sight on, well, how do I get them to do this or that. So, for example, within a cooking activity , you know, there's so many things that you can be working on. So while I do think -- and this is where I'm kind of going rogue here -- while I do think it's really awesome to be able to infuse a lot into an activity, I think it's important to remember too kind of what your purpose for that activity is. So if you're going to do a cooking activity one week, to teach them how to physically use a measuring cup and scoop out of the big jar of flour, that's wonderful and you can add some of that numeracy language in there. If you're going to use your cooking activity to teach one to one correspondence, to me you kind of have to think about what skills you're going to work on. Otherwise, it can be overwhelming for the student and then you've got too many kind of balls in the air, not sure where you should really be going with that. 

>> Renee: That's a really good point. I think you have to pick the big rocks and I think, too, that as teachers as we come in as itinerants I've seen teachers -- and I did it myself -- struggle with I want to make sure they have access to everything so I'm going to modify everything. Instead of, you know, Kathi's point what's the point of the lesson. How can I make that point of the lesson accessible and interactive and engaging versus I got to do it all. 

>> Debra: Or know that this week I'm going to concentrate on measurement. And know that next week I'm going to concentrate on patterning. You know, just so you don't -- not only you don't get totally overwhelmed but the student doesn't get totally overwhelmed. 

>> Renee: Well, and the parents and the classroom teachers don't because -- 

>> Debra: Because if you get overwhelmed, you're not going to do it in any of it, to a good degree. That's perfect. 

>> Renee: You know, to me it's really exciting because there's so many things, cool things that you can do that are just almost incidental with math. 

>> Debra: And I think that's true probably for almost every area of the ECC. We do them all the time but we don't go, oh, I taught social skills today because we were working in groups and communicating and turn taking and, you know, we really do so much and we do things into activities, but it takes a community of helpers. Home school and their support system. So true. We want to quickly talk about some resources for evaluation and resources for instruction. Kathi has put these -- they're on your PowerPoint but they're in your handout with the links so you have the link in the handout for EVALS, beginning concepts evaluation. The Oregon Project has some great early math activities in it. Texas 2 STEPS has spatial concepts and directional and positional concepts for evaluation and also for activities. And the Brigance, the early childhood Brigance is a great resource for evaluation as well. I can't talk. Okay. So for the resources for instruction, we have found in these trainings for literacy for little ones and now the early math -- I mean, the early numeracy, there's this great resource called super duper handy handouts and this one is especially good. It's math around the home. And I think we also pointed out some of those in the literacy for little ones presentation that we did. Again, the link, Kathi has the link and you can find all sorts of them. Some for empty language and for concepts. Super duper handy handouts are awesome. Building on patterns is another good instructional resource. Lots of dots 1, 2, 3. Those are fabulous instructional resource. And I already mentioned the little Texans, big futures. It has things broken out from zero to 3-year-olds and it has activity ideas for families and ideas for the classroom. The organize project, we mentioned, and 2 STEPS and Brigance. We mentioned in the eval section that Kathi has given you the handouts so you can take a look at those. So there is not a lack of resources for evaluation or for instruction. It's just that somebody said earlier in the chat it's nice to have things in a little pile here, in a little place where you can go look at them and go, oh, I could be working on patterning today and I could be doing this, this, and that. Really fabulous idea of the kebabs. I think having our resources in one place is so helpful for us because you guys don't have the time to go and pull from here and pull from there. Here are some resources for evaluation and also for instruction. Are there any questions or comments? I think our time is almost up. Kathi. 

>> Kathi: Charlotte was just posting in the chat that paths to literacy has some great ideas for numeracy as well. We should add that to our stuff. 

>> Debra: Thank you, Charlotte. It's mostly instruction, right, Charlotte? As opposed to eval? 

>> Kathi: She says yes. 

>> Debra: We will add that to this pile of -- this list. 

>> Renee: And when we were -- just real quick. When we were doing sort of the list, in the old days the Brigance used to be kind of more -- when I used it it was more of a protocol, but they have totally redone it and it comes with all kinds of resources and activities, kind of like The Oregon Project. I think we were pretty pumped to find out that they have sort of redone it. It's pretty cool looking. 

>> Debra: The Oregon Project, y'all probably all know this, it comes with a disk that's got tons of evaluation and mostly instructional activity ideas on it too. Any questions, comments? 

>> Renee: Well, I have to say you guys are fun to work with so thank y'all very much and I want to thank everybody for joining in again. 

>> Debra: I know. You know, early numeracy, I love early literacy but early numeracy just kind of grabs me. 

>> Renee: It's kind of fun. 

>> Kaycee: All right. Well, thank you, guys so much. You're getting lots of positive feedback in the chat. I will go ahead and give the code out so that anyone that has a meeting here coming up can jump to it. Grab a pen. Today's code is 050321. 050321. On May 6 later this week we have exploring ChromeVox on Chromebook with Cecelia Robinson and Bruce McClanahan. On May 10 we have collaborative evaluations with Marnee Loftin. You will not want to miss that. And May 13 we have a special two-hour session of collaboration entitled early intervention face-to-face and virtual with Karen Borg and Julie Maner and that will start at 11:00 a.m. central standard time. Check our Coffee Hour website, tsbvi.edu/coffeehour for upcoming registration information. To obtain your CEUs, respond to the evaluation that will be e-mailed to you from our registration website, escWorks, and enter the code which is 050321 and the CEU certificate will automatically generate upon completion of that evaluation. Also the handouts and recordings from this and past sessions are available through a link on our Coffee Hour page, tsbvi.edu/coffeehour. Once you're on that page, you'll scroll down to the list of sessions where it says visit the new TSBVI Coffee Hour archives. That's a link that will take you to the recordings, handouts, transcripts, and chat information. On the e-mail you receive from escWorks, there are two boxes. One is comments you would like to share. Please let us know in those boxes if the days and times we are offering Coffee Hour are working for your schedule or if you have other suggestions, particularly looking at next school year. We're making those decisions in the next week or so so let me know what you think and what time is working best for you. We also would love to hear your ideas on topics for future Coffee Hours. Thank you all so much for coming and thanks again to our presenters. The code is 050321. Thanks, everybody. 

>> Debra: Thanks, everyone for participating and attending. We enjoyed it. 

>> Kaycee: Thanks to our captioner. 

>> Debra: All the TSBVI support. Thank you. [ End of webinar ]