We have a range of giant floor puzzles at kinder which includes the themes space, dinosaurs, construction vehicles and …

this lovely one depicting mini beasts.

The children like to bring these puzzles down onto the floor as they are so big.

It’s never long before a crowd gathers to help out.

We love the way Charlotte is beginning to learn maths skills by comparing the picture on the box to the puzzle piece in her hand!

More maths takes place when the children look for all the edge pieces first.

The concept of working together is something our children understand really well these days.

It’s all about verbal and physical communication, patience, sharing, turn taking, teamwork and cooperation!

Important skills our children will rely on for life!

All being learned right here in kindergarten through playing with a giant puzzle on the floor …

WOW … a perfect example of play based learning!

Little pots of small interesting goodies such as beads, buttons, stones, corks etc…

… are just waiting to be popped onto the measuring scales to have their weights checked and compared.

We find adding the tweezers not only makes it more fun, but adds to the fine motor skill needed to accomplish the task.

The doll at the back in the chair is a prop to make the activity look more enticing, but of course, will probably become part of the play!

And there she goes!

Donna then brought along an old photo frame from home which has various compartments for different sized photos.

She took out the photos and glass and popped different coloured paper into each space with another selection of small bits and pieces.

Once again lots of wonderful fine motor activity …

and sorting took place.

More great play based learning!

Recently we had a student teacher with us and she was doing an activity with the children, the basis of which was boxes. Although it wasn’t the intention of the exercise, as usual (this is why teaching is so exciting!) some children thought outside the square and did their own thing…

… resulting in boxes being ‘flown’ from the top of the slide.

Other children decided they would like to make flying machines, and made smaller box aeroplanes and rockets which happened to fly more accurately and further than the larger rectangular ones.

We talked about why they flew better, the aerodynamics of it all, which led onto paper planes. Folding the paper into the right shape and creasing the folds is great for the children’s fine motor skills.

The making of the paper planes gave us a marvellous opportunity to talk maths.  How folding a large rectangle into halves creates a long thin rectangle, how when we turn over the top we make triangles, how the tip of the plane is pointy and it’s square at the bottom. We also talked about bigger, smaller, quicker, slower, high and low.

Then the children wanted to make other types of flying machines.  So we introduced them to straw glider making. 

Another maths opportunity arose when we talked about the straws and paper loops being different sized cylinders. 

We are lucky to have many high spots at our kinder – the top of the slide …

… the boat in the sandpit

and the best climbing equipment in the yard which is a long, strong willow branch. 

Paper planes were zooming everywhere for a few days …

… as were super straw gliders!

The children learned the results of throwing softly, fast or accurately when they saw where their planes ended up…

… some in very unusual destinations indeed!

We seem to have bucket loads of glass stones, mainly bought from discount shops, and we find the children use them for a wide variety of things.

We found an old picture frame and placed the stones in baskets for the children to do as they wanted. 

Some made beautiful patterns, while others dumped the whole lot in the frame and played with the piles. 

Later that week we were making a plain table more interesting with coloured strips, and someone brought a tub of stones over and put them in lines along the paper.

More and more strips were added with beautiful and intricate pattern making resulting.  

Simply irresistible!  

Pattern making is maths in action.