Learn
Lessons by theme
12 of them. Each is an hour outside and five minutes on a screen, in that order — the walk is the lesson and the game is the drill that fixes it while their hands are still cold. Each one is written out three times, for a two-year-old, a four-year-old and a six-year-old, with the actual words to say.
Look and count. Nothing goes in a mouth.
Counting
One number word per thing, and what to do when there are more things than fingers.
September–November · 45 min
A hundred acorns
Gather a heap, then discover that the only way to count a heap is to stop treating it as one.
Grouping as a counting strategy — the first real step towards place value.
Any month · 20 min
The five-minute bird count
Sit still for five minutes and mark down every bird. The oldest one learns tally marks; the youngest learns to sit still.
Tallying — counting in fives when the things being counted will not hold still.
August–November · 35 min
Getting to a hundred
Sunflower seeds, dried beans or maple keys, and the discovery that a hundred is not very many once it is in tens.
Counting past the fingers, and ten tens as a thing you can see.
Shapes and patterns
Symmetry, repeats and spirals — the arithmetic that shows up in how things grow.
April–September · 40 min
Count the petals
Flowers do not have random numbers of petals. Three, five, eight and thirteen come up again and again, and a six-year-old can find that out in an afternoon.
Counting small sets accurately, then noticing that a set of counts has a pattern in it.
May–October · 30 min
Fold a leaf in half
Most leaves fold onto themselves almost exactly. Almost is the interesting part.
Symmetry, matching, and the idea that two halves can be the same shape and opposite hands.
Any month · 35 min
Patterns in bark and stone
Make a pattern from what is on the ground, then get somebody else to finish it.
Repeating units — AB, ABB, ABC — which is where algebra quietly begins.
Time and the sky
Days, nights and months, counted rather than told.
Any month · 30 min
The shadow clock
Put a stick in the ground and mark its shadow every hour. By evening there is a clock on the lawn that nobody wound.
Measuring the same thing repeatedly, comparing lengths, and reading a sequence of numbers as a shape.
Any month · 5 min
A month of moons
Draw the moon every night for a month. It takes twenty-nine and a half nights to come back to where it started, and no calendar teaches that as well as twenty-nine drawings in a row.
Counting a long sequence, keeping a record, and meeting a cycle that is not seven days long.
August–October · 30 min
Counting down to frost
A paper chain with one link for every day until the first frost. Break one off each morning, and on the morning the grass crunches, count what is left.
Counting down, subtraction as distance, and what an average actually promises.
Living things
Legs, wings and how many of each — counting that arrives with its own multiplication table.
April–October · 40 min
How many legs?
Spiders have eight and beetles have six, which means a log with four spiders on it is a times table nobody had to invent.
Skip counting and the beginning of multiplication, with a reason to do it.
August–November · 30 min
Counting mushrooms, hands behind backs
After rain in autumn there are more mushrooms within fifty steps than anyone expects. This lesson is about counting them and only counting them.
Counting things that are scattered rather than lined up, and counting gills in fives.
Measuring
Longer, heavier, deeper, and the numbers that settle an argument about it.