Every day, through our play, we learn and develop our mathematical knowledge and skills. We’d like to share some examples of what we have been learning this week.
Our interest in playing with water never ebbs and the weather has provided us with natural changes in quantity, flow and direction of water this week too which has been great for deepening our numeracy learning. Using jugs to pour small quantities of water allowed some of us to explor how water runs down hill, how fast/slow it moves and how we can change it’s direction. Through this play we also explored gravity, force, speed, time and direction.
A volcano at the water tap taught us how air inside water creates bubbles. We discovered the right amount of pressure to exert on the tap to get the best bubbling volcano and listened to words such as “clockwise” and “anti-clockwise”. As the “lava” poured out we noticed that the water was having an effect on the cardboard too. Through our play we learned about changing materials, absorption and how long it took for water to soak through as we peeled back the layers of cardboard. Of course our “litter” needed to be taken away for recycling which included giving each other instructions and ensuring the right quantity was being transported!
As we filled jugs, containers and buckets we discovered how water can affect weight. We can carry small jugs but not large buckets when they are full and our diggers can carry more weight than we can. We used words like “heavy”, “light”, “heavier/lighter”. The large red bucket was used for many things this week. We stirred in different directions and in circles, we filled it “nearly to the top” so babies could be bathed and discovered how the water would spill over the side when more than one baby was in the bath.
By exploring the effects that rain had we noticed how the angles of the pavement directed water, we discovered drainage routes and had lots of opportunities to explore puddle depth and length as well as water displacement in another context.
Indoors the water tray was also used as a baby bath. We shared the babies between us, sometimes having one each and sometimes having one baby between more than one person. We explored the effects of large and small sponges on the amount of water that would clean the babies and took turns wiping them clean using counting as our timer. As we played in the water we explored pouring from different sized and shaped containers and how we could affect the speed and direction of the water. Some of us wanted to make cement in the sand. We used our knowledge of measure to get the right consistency by adding water or sand to our container. We explored the ratios through counting scoops of sand and water as we mixed.
There has also been a lot of mixing mathematics at the mud kitchen this week. We made “bolognaise”, “soup”, “cups of tea” and “pasta”. As we created these delicious meals and drinks we counted ingredients and how many scoops, we compared size and experimented with measurement, volume and capacity as we emptied and filled pots, pans and cups.
What better way to develop our maths knowledge and skills than through playing shops. This week some of us found a money jar in the resource cupboard and decided to create a shop. We cut our own shopping lists into rectangles and made signs to advertise our shop and it’s opening hours. We discussed why the shop was open through the day time and not at night. We took turns at being customers and shop assistants, talking about the price of our goods, how many things we wanted, what could fit in our baskets and bags and looking for numbers on the calculator “till”. We dialled phone numbers to order goods and some of us “baked” biscuits and sausage rolls for the shop using playdough. Throughout our shop play we deepened our awareness of how money is used, what it is used for and how exchange works. We talked about big and small numbers and had a go at writing some numbers. We learned words such as “expensive” and “cheap” and how that links to money and number. As we decided on what to buy and sell we categorised, sorted and matched and when we baked for the shop we compared shape, size and amounts. So much maths and so much fun!
We hope you’ve enjoyed seeing some of the ways we’ve been developing our numeracy skills this week and look forward to sharing more of our learning with you next week.
