Teacher's tips

Level of Education: Preschool

Subject: Mathematics

Theme: Spot the differences

Age: 05 to 08 years old

Teaching mathematics goes way beyond only solving problems in books. It is necessary to include methodologies that work with concentration, logical thinking, and motor coordination. One of these activities is the Spot the Differences game, which works essential skills for children's cognitive development, besides promoting important challenges during the teaching and learning processes. Recognizing limits and striving to achieve new goals will be part of this student's entire life. [FIM-DICA]

Learner outcomes

To identify similarities and differences through visual analysis (size, shape, color) between animals;

To make associations and stimulate perception;

To improve motor coordination, attention, and logical thinking;

To promote the development of memory performance;

To develop different thinking skills such as: observing, comparing, analyzing, and synthesizing;

To exercise memory and concentration in the process of identification and comparison between images;

To find the differences between the two images that are almost identical.

Teachers' goals

To provide an environment of free imagination and creativity;

To develop the student's reasoning ability;

To enable integration between different areas of knowledge;

To allow the development of different strategies for approaching reality either through comparison.

Suggestions of approaches for the teacher

(Suggestion 1) To work with the discrimination of figures, print on a sheet several scrambled animals, putting some facing to the right and some to the left. Tell students which ones are correct: the ones facing right or left. Then ask them to paint the incorrect animals.

(Approach 2) Take the magic cube to the classroom, tell the story of how it was invented, and ask students to try to assemble it. Show them why it's so hard to do it.

(Approach 3) Play domino games! You can use the traditional dominoes or replace the dots with different shapes.

(Approach 4) Play Jenga-style games (stacked blocks of wood).

(Approach 5) Elaborate logical sequence of colors, letters, numbers, and geometric shapes.

(Approach 6) Play mimics and guessing games.

(Approach 7) Encourage students to make their own 'Spot the Differences game. Then, ask them to share with their classmates.

(Approach 8) Assemble puzzles.

More about the content

The "Spot the Differences" game is very old. Although it has a simple methodology, many skills can be developed with it, such as:

1. To identify the objects you see: you make use of your occipital lobe.

2. To analyze the spatial relationships between objects you see, you use your occipital and parietal lobes.

3. To remember what you saw in one image and compare it to what you see in the other, you have to use your short-term memory: wrapping your frontal and parietal lobes.

4. Noticing the places where you see the differences involve the frontal lobe located at the front of the brain (forehead). It includes the motor cortex and the prefrontal cortex.

5. Development of the capacity for perception and discrimination of objects;

6. Development of logical reasoning;

7. Increase in concentration

Source: https://neuropsicopedagogianasaladeaula.blogspot.com/2013/10/jogo-dos-7-erros-aprendizagens.html

Access: July 05, 2021