Irresistible Ideas for play based learning » Numeracy

::: block play revisited again and again …

admin — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:01:35 +0000

Thanks to the wonderful help and support of our followers we recently reconnected with Steven and Vanessa from “Block Play” formerly known as “Mahkupu”.

We had a lovely surprise this week when we received an excited phone call from Vanessa and Steven as they have been overwhelmed by the reponse they have been receiving from parents and teachers who have seen their product on our website.

They happened to be in the area visiting a local kindergarten extolling the virtues of their blocks, and wanted to have a chat about it, so popped by with a delicious cake for afternoon tea – sorry, no photo as it was scoffed really quickly! We had a great chat and they were thrilled to hear how our children continue to gain so much pleasure from playing, constructing and engineering with their fabulous blocks.

Besides the obvious (see above), we love that they are made from certified plantation grown hardwood and made in community workshops in Java, supporting the local population. Go Vanessa and Steven!

They are in the process of putting together their own website, but if you would like to get in touch with them meantimes, their email address is blocks@tpg.com.au

Each time we’ve posted about these magnificent blocks many followers from around the world, particularly the United States have shown interest in purchasing the blocks and having them shipped overseas. We have had a big chat to Steven and Vanessa about this and they have agreed that if they could find a responsible person to become an ‘Agent’ for their product they would seriously consider looking into the logistics of shipping their product to the U.S.

SO if you would be interested in chatting to Steven and Vanessa about this please send them an email or get in touch with us through out “Contact Us” page!

::: sowing seeds

admin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:01:57 +0000

We were having a bit of chat with the children about the birdlife we find in our kinder garden. As you all can imagine, we don’t get a lot – who would visit a place which is full of rampaging four and five year olds?

Although our resident family of magpies never fail to visit us daily!

One of our familes recently donated a feeder for the wild birds and slowly over time we are getting less of the crows and Indian minors, and more rosellas …

and corellas which is very exciting!

As we were refilling the birdfeeder one day …

the children commented on the ‘grass’ growing under the feeder and were interested to learn it was the bird seed growing!

We talked about the variety of seeds in the mix …

and how lovely it felt!

We popped some seed into tubs and added different sized pouring containers so the children could have some sensory fun.

After enjoying the lovely experience of it for a while we though it might be fun to plant it and see what grew.

We were lucky enough to have a lot of clear baby food jars which we thought would enable the children to witness the root sytem taking hold.

So with a bit of cotton wool …

a scoop of seeds …

and a good squirt of water the children planted out their own miniature gardens.

All they’ll need now is a dose of sun which they will have to get at home as it is term break here and we didn’t think they would survive two weeks without some tender loving care. Fingers crossed the children will rock up with some nice interesting growth in their jars when we return to kinder!

unidentified flying objects

admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:01:52 +0000

Following our fun with the balloon rocket we started thinking about other ways of sending objects into space.

We decided to make straw gliders. The balloons were propulsed by the compressed air shooting out but the straw gliders needed a bit of human intervention to get anywhere.

As the weather is very cold and wet here in Melbourne at the moment, it was a great indoor activity and gliders went flying all over the room!

Great maths took place again – small piece, large one, rectangle, round, circle, cylinder, this end and that end, hanging the same way, the colours of the materials and so on.

Getting the right technique so they flew well was important too. A quick upward flick of the wrist had them flying over the rafters and in amongst our rockets and planets.

The next thing the children made was a more gentle flying object – a parachute.

We do try to avoid using plastic bags, but we still seem to accumulate some. We decided to recycle them and made them the basis of the parachutes along with a ball of string and we used gumnuts for our parachuters.

By simply attaching a piece of string, using masking tape, to each corner of the plastic and attaching all strings to the gumnut we produced pretty flash parachutes.

This time the rain let up and we were able to fly them outside from the top of the slide with very successful results!