Quite a few parents have come to me with the question of whether they should send their children for abacus classes.  From my discussion with them, I gathered that on one hand, many are impressed with the apparent effect abacus classes have on the speed of doing mental sum; on the other hand, they have also heard stories of how children get confused as abacus method is vastly different from number bonds, which seems to be the method of choice being taught at primary level.

I thought I would take the opportunity to clarify on this and hopefully to reach out to as many parents as possible with regards to this confusion. 

What is Number Bond?

In my years of teaching both preschoolers and P1 children, I have found that one of the most difficult topic to teach is teach children how to analyse questions such as “ 4 is _________ less than 7” or “8 is _________ more than 3”.

I know many parents who are extremely frustrated with trying to help their young ones grasp the concepts behind such questions.  I have even seen circumstances whereby parents resorted to finding the various permutations which the questions could be asked and get their children to memorise whether it should be addition or subtraction based on how the questions are phrased. 

 In my course of teaching preschool children, I have come across many parents expressing their frustration and helplessness in helping their children prepare for primary school mathematics.  The one topic that seems to baffles parents most is the model method.  

The Singapore Model Method for problem solving is an innovative pedagogical method developed by a team of curriculum specialists from MOE in the 1980s to address the issue of students having great difficulty with word problems in the early years of primary school.  By now, the Singapore Model Method has become a distinguishing feature of the Singapore primary mathematics curriculum. 

If I were to break it down into its most basic, the Singapore Model Method basically entails children to draw a visual model to represent mathematical quantities and their relationships given in a problem, and the visual model becomes a tool to help the children solve the word problem.  

As adults, when we see 5 + 3 = ?, we understand that this is a symbolic representation of a problem and we know the answer “8” is a symbolic representation of the solution to the problem.  We do but children may not necessarily understand that.  This is also one reason that contributes to many young children struggling with solving mathematical word problem questions.

Here’s a question I spotted from a primary one CA test paper :

Susan and Mary have 8 chocolate cookies altogether.  Mary has 4 more cookies than Susan.  How many chocolate cookies does Susan have?

It's holidays time again! And as a parent myself, I have already started to look at fun yet educational activities I can do with my daughter. 

At the same time, I have also designed three different holidays workshops catered to different age groups and interest during the holidays.

Thinking Loft Kitchen Science - the kitchen is such a wonderful fertile ground to stimulate the natural curiosity in children.  And all children love tinkering with pots and pans and flour and generally making a mess!  I have therefore designed a 90min workshop whereby children get to bake their own cupcakes from scratch and at the same time be guided to think about why baking sodas is added into the cupcake dough.  To help them arrive at their own conclusion, we will also be doing a side science experiment using what else but baking soda!