Stop and think

It looks like most of the math problems used in schools is targeted at kids getting a skill of automatically apply their knowledge to the problem. While this is very valuable it also prevents kids from thinking out of the box, from stopping, pausing before proceeding with the known approach. I remember when my son was around 5, he was able to figure out "Wolf, Goat and Cabbage problem"* with a number of attempts. When he was 6-7 - he gave up after about a minute of trying and realizing that trying to bring either wolf, goat or cabbage to another shore will fail. He wouldn't think of an original solution - to bring somebody back from the other shore.

It turns out that there are simple exercises that develop "Inhibitory control" - ability to not let the automatic response run the show.

Here are some ideas from "Mind in the making" by Ellen Galinsky which may be good for kids starting 3-4 year old:

1. Anti Simon says. Simon says "touch your toes". The child has to do the opposite (touch the head)
2. Playing a game with changing rules. For example, given a set of things of different sizes and colors, first order the things by sizes. Then order the same things by colors, or by categories.
3. Tap once after I tap twice. Tap twice after I tap once.
4. Show a picture of a day and ask a child to say that it is night and vice versa.


* Given wolf, goat and cabbage, transport them to another shore, with the condition that a wolf can not be with goat, and goat can not be with cabbage. There is a boat and only one thing can be in the boat at a time.