Teacher Natasha presented an interesting activity on one of the tables.

She put sparkly colored pompoms with few tongs. Hothaifa and Ain were busy sorting the pompoms by colour using the tongs. I joined in and started some conversation with them. Lovely pompoms masha Allah. Hothaifa said: Ain has blue and I have green. I said which ones you think are more, the blue or the green. He said after looking at both and trying to estimate: The green. I said may be! How can we be sure? He was puzzled and said the blue. I said shall we count? Both he and Ain started counting together. They both did well until they reached 13 and started skipping some numbers and I would correct them. I suggested bringing a pen and a paper to write down the numbers so we can decide which number is bigger and they approved the idea. When the numbers started getting in the twenties and thirties both Ain and Hothaifa started pausing and miss counting and I tried helping them by introducing a special technique of working out the high numbers of twenty then thirty and forty by simplifying the count to them that after two is three so after twenty is thirty and so on. They were impressed and grasped the concept well masha allah. When I wrote the numbers on the paper they were able to recognize the individual numbers and started learning which number will be bigger when two numbers are put together such as 36 is bigger than 24 for example. Both Hothaifa and Ain have been engaged for a good time in this activity counting, sorting, using their fine motor skill as well as reasoning skills to recognize quantities. Safwan joined in and started using his fingers to sort another colour then he used the tongs then switched back to his figures as if he was deciding which way is more efficient. He was also counting and his brother Hothaifa was helping him count. We concluded the act by sorting and counting all colours, writing all numbers on the paper and deciding the biggest number.

By Teacher Maysoon (Manager), March 2013