Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

Parents often ask us how we can incorporate maths into a kindergarten program when some of the children are not interested in writing their own name, let alone learning about mathemathical concepts.

We have posted before about these wonderful maths tiles and spoken about how maths is all around us in children’s play.

Just look at the amazing patterns our children made last week …

all of this is wonder kindergarten maths!

Building with blocks is maths!

Measuring with blocks  …  maths!

Counting the blocks while measuring is maths!

Building the blocks to fit the ‘subject’  … that’s right  … maths!

Weights and scales is another way the children experiment with maths.

Just watch …

as our friend Olivia …

adds and subtract objects from the buckets …

until she makes the scales balance … maths!

Some kindergarten children are even ready to extend their maths skills further.

This is a game of snakes and ladders drawn up by one of our young friends.

Lots of sequencing of numbers  … 100 in all!

Now this my friends is how we can incorporate maths into a kindergarten program!

Following on from the wax resist batik style decorating of the bunting, we wanted to try something a little bit different … Actually a lot different!

Some children asked if they could make flags the same shape as the ones Donna made, so we purchased some brightly coloured 100% cotton fabric and cut it up into triangles.

So far the children have been adding colour to their flags. This time we thought we’d let them try removing the colour from the flags.

We thought it would be a great scientific experiment as well as a new art experience for the children to bleach the colours out of the fabric as long as we were very careful and put a few safety precautions in place.

So we diluted the bleach a little but as it continued to rain we were forced to do this inside, so we sat in front of the door for ventilation.

We gave the children clothing protection, safety goggles and masks to wear.

Hee hee hee. They LOVED it!

Instead of brushes they used cotton buds to apply the bleach.

They had a ball and were endlessly fascinated by the results. We found if they hung their flags near the heater to dry out, the results were almost instantaneous!

In a similar vein we tried some tie dyeing.

The children scrunched up the material …

and we helped them stretch elastic bands around it very tightly …

before dunking it into the bleach.

For this we gave them tongs as a further safety precaution.

Oh WOW! So COOL!

Tomorrow we’ll show you how the chidren sewed their flags up on the sewing machine.

That’s right … the children!

As we mentioned in our “marble run fun” post this week our children have been having a lot of fun with marbles lately.

On our recent foray to Reverse Art Truck we found some pink sponges with holes cut out of them about the size of marbles.

We grabbed a few of them and then put them out on a tray with a lip with containers of marbles, tweezers and spoons.

That table was never empty of little bodies – they loved it!

They scooped the marbles with the little spoons …

moved them around with the tweezers …

and made patterns with them.

Not only did this prove to be a wonderful fine motor exercise …

but the squishiness of the sponge coupled with the polished finish of the glass marbles made for a great sensory experience as well.

As the day was very wet and we were inside for quite a long time, one of our boys who is a soccer and footy tragic, seized the moment when he noticed the table was unattended …

to make the tray into a soccer field. He cleared the decks, added goals at each end and used the marble as a soccer ball.

It became quite competitive when a mate joined him.

Life is never dull, is it?