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Math in the Early Years
October 22, 2014
What its children become, that will the community become.
-Suzanne La Follette
-Suzanne La Follette
In her article, "How Learning Math Skills 'Fits' with Emergent Curriculum," which is included in the new Exchange Essential, Fostering Mathematical Concepts, Heather Brandon shares this story...
"As the children’s play moved away from fitting themselves and objects inside the boxes to building them upwards, we added ladders and step stools. Likewise, as walls and enclosures became more elaborate, furniture had to be reorganized. At least one adult was always close by, involved and supportive but not intruding on the children. Box play was all-consuming, both indoors and out. As educators we had no agenda but to engage our curiosity and see what happened.
"The children did some things we expected. They pushed, pulled, stacked, jumped on, carved, and decorated the boxes. They also engaged in nesting the smaller boxes inside the larger ones, built ‘towers’ all the way to the ceiling, and constructed ‘fences’ that divided the room in half. They played at concealing and transporting all sorts and sizes of things. We recognized that through these tasks the children were learning about balance, gravity, size and weight, and durability of materials, as well as collaboration."
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Comments (2)
Displaying All 2 CommentsChild & Family Research Center
Reno, Nevada, United States
At an outdoor art installation-playscape for young children called "In and Out of the Box", children with adult support created items from recycled boxes for play. Using prior experience in the classrooms with boxes, and natural materials such as tree branches the creations were also sculptures. This is more than math: STEM - science of cardboard, Technology of design, Engineering the structure, and lots of Math to compare, measure, time and so on. Children discovered properties of physics using tubes, inclines, sound, and movement. Here is a link to a brief viewing: http://www.mynews4.com/news/story/In-and-Out-of-the-Box-developing-creativity-in/ww-1toPL70Om0Qvg5CKxhQ.cspx
Spirit Child Yoga & RECE
Aurora, ON, Canada
Thanks for highlighting early math through this article. We do need to focus on what we want to see more of!
One challenge I see as an ECE Field Visitor, is that I don't think enough of our ECEs recognize that "playing with boxes" is a math activity. I don't believe enough ECEs or kindergarten teachers would value the children's prolonged and deep exploration as it would be "untidy" and "dangerous". One challenge I see is that people choosing to study ECE, often don't have strong math skills themselves. Although the widespread use of documentation is helping, a "messy" classroom, may be misunderstood by supervisors and families as disorganized as they can't see the learning.
Hopefully the "making learning visible" of documentation will allow this exciting hands-on learning to continue to flourish!
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