Stop and Reflect

Temperature

Understanding that temperature is something that can be measured is abstract and difficult for young children other than in general terms such as hot, cold, and warm. The classroom should include different tools for measuring temperature with displays in both analog and digital format, including oral, candy, meat, and refrigerator thermometers and outdoor digital and clock-style thermometers. Children can be encouraged to observe and record temperatures and engage in activities that involve materials that they can heat, melt, or freeze.

Children can also be encouraged to monitor the movement of mercury or dials as temperature changes. For example, many states’ licensing laws prohibit play outdoors when the temperature exceeds 90 degrees Fahrenheit; in applicable climates, if you mark the window thermometer at the 90 degree mark and children can be on the lookout for when the mercury or dial handle reaches that mark to announce “It’s 90!”

Time

Children confuse general use of the word time in the context of nap time, time to go, and so on with actual measurement of time. The various dimensions of timeclock, calendar, and historical timeare also abstract and take time to develop. Charlesworth (2005) describes three kinds of time: personal experience (past, present, future), social activity (routines/order), and cultural (fixed by clocks and calendar measurements).

You can promote basic concepts, such as that:

• Time is relative and cyclical
• Time can be represented as sequence or by duration
• Time always goes forward but we can talk about time that has passed.
• We measure time by equal intervals of different kinds (e.g., seconds, hours, days, years)

It is also important to develop a “time vocabulary”words like time, age, morning, afternoon, soon, tomorrow, yesterday, early, and late. Concrete tools for measuring time can be very helpful. For example, setting a kitchen timer or using a small sand hourglass while children are engaged in an activity helps them gain a sense of how clock time passes. This is particularly useful for helping impulsive children learn to wait for “just a minute” or “two minutes.” Other things you can do include:

• Counting days until birthdays, holidays, or an anticipated special event
• Talking about what children did over the weekend on Mondays
• Displaying the daily routine in a linear sequence of pictures
• Emphasizing what came before and what comes next in sequenced activities, such as following a recipe
• Gardening activities that offer opportunities to count days and measure growth over time
• “How many things can we do in a minute” games
• Installing a sundial outdoors

Currency

Children find American currency challenging because of centrationthey assume bigger means more and that therefore a nickel should be worth more than a dime or penny. They also have trouble with paper vs. coin. As with the representation of number as quantity in general, it takes time for them to understand the symbolism behind currencythat the nickel represents 5 cents, the dime 10 cents, the dollar 100 cents, and so on.

Children do learn about the value of money and its concrete uses (buying things) and can be engaged in using real money judiciously. For example, children in Mr. Dick’s 4-year-old class decided to use the outdoor playhouse to set up a store for selling snacks. They made juice popsicles, secured a “loan” to buy a big box of Goldfish crackers, and determined that each item would cost a penny to buy. They made signs for the store and dictated a note for home, asking parents to send their friends with pennies to spend in the store. They also “hired” children in the 2-year-old class to do jobs for them they didn’t want to do (such as sweeping out the playhouse) for a penny!

While the value placed on work and their product was not realistic in terms of the real world, it definitely showed their understanding of how money is used and critical to the exchange of goods and services. They carefully tracked their revenues over a week and were able to determine when they had enough pennies to pay back their loan. They were also ecstatic to find, at the end of the week, that they had made a profit of $3.34!