Where toddlers ask “what is it?”, preschoolers tend to ask “why is it, and how does it fit?” How does this idea fit into the framework I have built about how the world works? Why do these things work the way they do? How are things categorized? These questions can make it easier as the adult to think of activities to do with children this age, as long as we remember that we do not need to answer the questions ourselves. Often we shouldn’t answer the questions ourselves because it robs our children of the joy and satisfaction of discovery! My four year old has been playing some games which include division recently and he noticed that sometimes things cannot be evenly divider. He was honestly a little perturbed by the idea of a remainder in division so I thought it would be a good idea to introduce even and odd numbers. We had counters on hand, I mean after all you can use anything as a counter as long as you have enough of that object! So I quickly cut out some labels for even and odd and introduced the concept to Mr Man. I showed him how to line up the counters in pairs. Numbers that had no lonely counters were even, and numbers that had a counter left without a pair were odd. He picked it up right away and made the observation that this was why sometimes in his division game there were remainders! He also pointed out that he remembered from our walk earlier a street where he had only seen odd numbered houses and he wondered about that. I didn’t feel the need to explain why there were only odd number houses on that street and instead I tucked that information away in my mind to explore on our next walk. The next day on our walk he pointed out the houses he had brought up, sure enough they were all odd numbers. After giggling for a bit about how “odd” that was he wondered what the house numbers were on the other side of the street. When he realized they were all even he had a lightbulb moment. He followed the numbers from one side of the street to the other counting all the way up the street. I had the opportunity back at the start of this line of inquiry, during the frustration about remainders to explain even and odd numbers. I also had the opportunity to explain the house number situation during our even and odd number game. I could have used these times as opportunities to impart knowledge upon him. However that would have robbed him of the opportunity to make these connections, and make sense of these experiences himself. It would likely not have had as much of an impact on his understanding of numbers and probably would have ended that line of inquiry. Sometimes there are times when it is necessary to just answer a question outright, but whenever possible if you can then simply join in that wondering and join your preschooler on their quest to find answers. It will be much more rewarding!
