Little things

Orla likes to gift us little things. A flower....





Or a leaf.




Sometimes the little things are carefully cut up pieces of paper.



Sometimes they have important things written or drawn on them.





Sometimes the pieces of paper go into a container of some kind - a backpack, box or bag.




On this day, Orla put her bits of paper into the transparent back pack and said "I'm SO ready for Playcentre!". (This was just before term started). She put her bag on top of mine.



Once at Playcentre, she handed out little bits of paper to some of her friends.

Disconnecting/separating, enveloping, and something else that I haven't quite grasped yet. The gifting aspect is important too.

Necessity is the mother....

I confiscated the new game of Connect 4 as it seemed to be causing fights.

So the children did their own Connect 4 outside.

Mathematics in motion

After tea one night, the big kids decided to have a game of bowls down the hallway. Pillars, columns and octagonal prisms from the blocks-set served as pins, while Aidan's new glitter ball served as the ball.



It's hit! (Strangely the ball is almost invisible in these low-light photos!).



While one played, the other kept tally of the score - X means there was a strike. There was an agreed set of rules which seemed more complex than the usual bowling game!




Isabelle's turn.



And of course the big kids were keenly watched by the little kids, who played their own version the next day.





My thoughts on this:

- It's a great example of child-initiated mathematical learning/play. There's the obvious counting, addition and tally marks, but there's also the spatial relationships, learning how different block set-ups look (and whether or not they fit easily together in the classic bowling triangle).
- Children's learning choices are not random and are based on their environment and experiences. Isabelle and Aidan don't have much knowledge about bowling. I think most of my childhood knowledge came from this! However, in place of a canceled rugby game we went for the first time this winter - and Aidan very recently has been invited to a bowling party. So interest in bowling has been piqued.
- Imitation is important. Orla and Ewan would not have understood the game in the same way as the older two, but Orla knew the basics, and chose to use the same ball (in Aidan's absence!). Big kids can inspire - but in this case it was easier for the little kids to find their own way using the same resources at a later time when the big ones were elsewhere. Isabelle and Aidan's play was fully co-operative with complex rules. Orla and Ewan were more in the embryonic co-operative phase, with Ewan mainly looking on (a learning pose not uncommon in toddlers).
- I didn't know that the children knew about tally marks - I hadn't seen them use them before. Isabelle has since told me that you learn them in year 2. So this story also shows peer tutoring. Aidan would have immediately seen the relevance and usefulness of the tally mark as a counting system (which is hard to replicate in the classroom).