““The environment is so friendly, playful and caring, yet the attention to academic readiness and the development of confidence and personal responsibility for self and others is precise and consistent. ”
Morning Lesson
Another teacher joins us for morning lesson time, allowing each teacher to work with four or five children. This ratio ensures that we know exactly what each child is understanding and what they are not.
We have a rich array of math manipulatives with which to create activities that teach and exercise each concept. Lesson time is active, concrete, and engaging. The children cycle through 5 to 10 activities each morning.
A child might begin with a couple of warm-up games that exercise their knowledge of math facts.
Moving on to Race to 100 or Race Back to 0, where they need to trade 10 ones for a ten bar, ten ten bars for a hundred square if they are learning to carry, or the reverse if they are learning to borrow.
After that they might work on number writing at the blackboard. Then they might figure out how much to pay for their fruits and vegetables at the farm stand, working in their math workbook, or playing a fraction game with a friend. Lesson time ends with a short phonics activity.
Children leave Ziji with a very solid math foundation and usually reading and writing above their grade level.
“I really miss my new puppy! Except when I’m doing multiplication. I just love multiplication.”