Children are cleverer than adults used to think

Children are more capable than people used to think. Recent research has shown that babies only weeks old can count. Interestingly this experiment involved the use of puppets. Babies, will stare at a situation whenever something unexpected occurs. This enables researchers to know whenever a baby encounters something they find surprising. The experiment involved the researchers showing two puppets to a baby. They then dropped a screen and very obviously removed one of the puppets from behind the screen, so that the babies could see it being taken away. On some occasions when the screen was raised again there was only one puppet there, but on others the researchers surreptitiously introduced another puppet so that when the screen was raised there were two. The baby was found to be expecting to see only one puppet, because on those occasions when there were two, the babies stared at the occurrence for a significantly longer time than they did when only one puppet was there, indicating that they were surprised. This indicates that even very young children can count. So why do so many children find so much difficulty with maths? It must be a function of the way maths is taught. Maths teachers simply are not connecting and communicating with young children well. This is why we have developed Puppet Maths, to communicate the ideas of maths with children and develop their natural ability to succeed in the subject.