Looking for Learning: Maths Through Play EXTRACT

FEATHERSTONE Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, FEATHERSTONE and the Feather logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Text copyright © Laura England, 2021 Photographs © Laura England, except for pages 3, 5(r), 6(b), 7(t), 9(t), 11(b), 13, 14(t), 15, 17(bl), 18(b), 20(tr, br), 21, 22(b), 24(r), 25, 30(l), 31(tl, tr, bl), 32(tr, br), 33, 35, 36(b), 37, 39(m), 41, 42, 44(br), 46, 47, 48(l), 49(t), 52(t), 53, 59, 60(l), 61(bl, br), 62(br), 63(m) © Shutterstock; pages 14(br), 50 from Little Angels Schoolhouse; pages 14(l), 22(t), 28(t), 44(tr), 52(l), 61(t) from Woodhill Primary School © Suzanne Plunkett www.suzanneplunkett.com; pages 31(br), 57 (t) © S. Jacobs Laura England has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work Quotations from National Curriculum documents used in this publication are approved under an Open Government Licence: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: PB: 978-1-4729-6309-3; ePDF: 978-1-4729-6308-6; ePub:978-1-4729-6307-9 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Series design: Lynda Murray Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd.

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Contents Introduction...............................................4 Maths theory..............................................5 Cardinality and counting................................ 6 Comparison....................................................... 7 Composition...................................................... 8 Pattern................................................................. 9 Shape and space............................................ 10 Measure.............................................................11

The characteristics of effective learning....................................12 Maths during daily routines..................13 Role play...................................................15 Home corner................................................... 16 Deconstructed role play................................17 Mud kitchen..................................................... 19 Tabletop role play...........................................20

Construction...........................................21 Block play.........................................................22 Outdoor construction...................................22 Transient structures........................................23 Tabletop scrap construction........................24

Sand and water.......................................41 Using sand to explore maths.......................42 Outdoor sand and water play.....................44 Water play with pipes and ramps...............45 Tabletop sand play.........................................46

Malleable play......................................... 47 Play dough stations........................................48 Tabletop play dough......................................49 Creating with clay..........................................50 Loose parts kits............................................... 51

Loose parts..............................................53 Loose parts stations.......................................54 Tinker trays.......................................................55 Cardboard........................................................ 57 Natural loose parts.........................................58

Technology............................................. 59 Incorporating technology into your continuous provision.................................... 60 Using light to explore maths.......................63

Further reading...................................... 64

Nature...................................................... 25 The plant lifecycle..........................................26 Counting and comparing outdoors..........26 Nature collector baskets............................... 27 Patterns.............................................................28 Nature stations................................................28 Tabletop nature...............................................30

Art............................................................. 33 Sorting shelves and tools.............................34 Measuring water, paint and glue................35 Junk modelling...............................................35 Art stations........................................................ 37 Transient art.....................................................39

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Role play

R

ole play will give young children opportunities to explore mathematical concepts in a safe space. It is an area of continuous provision that is for exploration but doesn’t feel intimidating to children. This means it is a great place to introduce mathematical concepts: the maths is hidden within their play. For example, children may be familiar with cooking at home and often role play this. During this type of play children may need to select the right size of pan for the vegetables they are cooking or a certain amount of plates for the number of people they are preparing food for; all of this will build maths development within their play.

In this section we will look at different types of role play and their links to maths: from home corners to tabletop role play, there is something that will suit every type of setting.

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HOME CORNER A home corner, for me, is a staple role play scenario.

It creates a safe space that all children are familiar with. The home corner is a great place for thinking about maths, because maths-related objects are everywhere in the home. You can add the following items to a home corner:

• Telephone directories or leaflets with phone numbers on them

• Old phones • House number plaques • Weighing scales • Clocks, watches and timers • Measuring jugs.

Many of the items will feel familiar to the children and create an authentic space for mathematical development. Something else to be aware of is the relevance of the resources to children’s everyday lives: consider this before adding objects to the home corner. For example, old typewriters create awe and wonder in the home corner but not many households have them. Weighing scales are another example: at home, children will most likely see adults using electronic scales rather than balance scales with weights. However, it is still good practice to have a mixture of modern and older home corner items as they both have their benefits.

There are lots of opportunities to explore maths through the home corner. For example, children can be encouraged to count out numbers of things, such as how many cups they will need to make everyone a cup of tea. This can be extended by asking how many are left once they have given out a few cups, or how many they will need if someone changes their mind and doesn’t want a cup of tea anymore.

Children could be provided with ten cakes and be asked to share them out between two people. This will encourage them to notice that numbers can be made up of two smaller numbers. You could extend this by specifically asking the children to give one person more cakes than another or to share the cakes out equally. You could also ask them to share the cakes between more than two people.

But there is much more to do in the home corner besides counting and comparing. For example, children could measure out ingredients, weigh dolls, or follow simple recipes. You could create recipe cards that are aimed at different stages of children’s development. Firstly, children might follow a sequence (e.g. put buttons in a pan, then add wooden rings to the pan, then stir), and then they could build up to more complex recipes (e.g. put 100 grams of buttons in a pan, then add seven wooden rings to the pan, then stir).

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Looking for Learning: Maths through Play

DECONSTRUCTED ROLE PLAY Put simply, deconstructed role play allows young children to create their own role play through loose parts and random materials. You can provide items such as cardboard boxes, lengths of fabric, pegs, cable reels, planks of wood, large tubes, tyres and tarpaulins as a starting point. If a child wants to create a castle: they can! If they want to create a beach: they can! Their play is only limited by their imagination. This is a great way to encourage children to start problem-solving. Children need to think for themselves about what they might use to represent the sea, for example, or what items might be stacked together to make a castle turret, rather than the adults creating the role play area and removing the problemsolving opportunities. What’s more, this type of play leads to creativity, critical thinking, independence and other areas of child development.

When it comes to using maths in the home corner, the most important goal is to try to find moments to scaffold the maths that is taking place. For example, lots of children will pretend to make dinner in the home corner; we all hear children say ‘Who wants dinner?’ as they’re playing in the kitchen area. When you answer with ‘Yes please’, do you extend this? You could ask the children:

Deconstructed role play offers plenty of opportunities for exploring shape and space, as children choose different materials for a purpose and develop an awareness of the key characteristics of shapes, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of how shapes fit together to create spaces. This is why the range of materials we offer for this type of play is really important, so that children have more choice over what they will use to represent different items and to create different layouts.

• How many people are having dinner?

• What size of pan will be needed for that many people?

• How long it will take?

This is just one example of how a very simple question can lead to a lot of mathematical exploration.

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Something as simple as choosing a plank of wood to fit across two tyres requires young children to use mathematical thinking as they begin to predict what will happen. For example, once a child has placed their plank of wood across the tyres they may notice that it slants due to one tyre being deeper than the other, and they will need to use their problemsolving skills to rectify this. As an adult I would simply replace one of the tyres so that the two tyres were the same height. But when this problem occurred in my practice the child did something I wouldn’t have thought to do: he used wooden discs to prop up the lower side. By giving the child some space and not interfering, he was able to figure out his own solution and the learning that took place was even more effective than if I had showed him how to do it. He had a real sense of achievement that only strengthened his intrinsic motivation to persevere and try again.

During deconstructed role play, it’s a good idea to get children to draw a picture of their design first, thinking about what the structure is and what features it will have. For example, we can scaffold children’s ideas by asking questions such as:

• Why are you using a plank to represent a wall?

• Is the plank the same shape as the wall?

• Are the plank and the wall both straight?

We don’t have to be intrusive with our questioning; we can simply comment on the similarities and differences between materials to encourage children to tune into them. From a maths point of view, other great resources to add to the deconstructed role play area include metre rulers, spirit levels and measuring tapes (both metal and fabric, as children can then select the correct one for the job, for example, choosing a fabric tape to measure a curved shape).

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Looking for Learning: Maths through Play

Construction

C

onstruction is a great way for children to express themselves through creating different structures. By being given the freedom and space to explore new ideas, children will gain independence and confidence as the materials provided are completely open-ended and can be used in many ways. There are lots of links between construction activities and mathematical learning. Construction also has benefits for children’s personal, social and emotional development, as well as providing opportunities to develop communication and language.

What’s really great about construction is the simplicity and versatility of it. Larger settings might have areas filled with blocks, tubes, cable reels and crates for construction play, but all you really need is a box of blocks and you’re good to go.

OUTDOOR CONSTRUCTION Being outdoors provides children with space to do large-scale construction activities. Children can develop a sense of space through their movements.

Another benefit of outdoor construction is that children have the space outside to build and use obstacle courses and dens. You can scaffold positional language into this sort of play, for example, by commenting on the child’s position in an obstacle course. You could ask:

• Are you are under the bridge?

• Can you go around the tyre?

• Who is inside the den and who is outside the den?

BLOCK PLAY Young children will explore mathematical concepts by building towers and comparing the different shapes and sizes of blocks. If possible, provide a range of different block types: wooden, metallic, hollow, or light-up blocks, for example, as well as additional materials such as cable reels or log slices.

Many young children love to build towers and knock them down. Simple games such as counting up for the children before they knock their towers over (‘One... two… three… go!’) will help to get children used to numbers, as will counting for the children as they place each block. Another favourite activity in my setting is seeing who can build the biggest tower, which can be extended into talking about big and small, short and tall, thin and wide, etc., as well as using lots of positional language: on top, under, inside, around, etc.

Children can also explore pattern and shape through block play. For example, they can build towers using different-coloured blocks to create a pattern (one green block, two blue blocks, one green block, two blue blocks, etc.). You could add photos of the towers children have made in the block area to your continuous provision, to inspire children to follow patterns and to compare shapes. You could also provide images of real buildings, to encourage children to think about the shapes that would be needed to recreate the buildings.

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Looking for Learning: Maths through Play

Obstacle courses Many children enjoy the competitive aspect of obstacle courses, often talking about who can complete the course in the fastest time. This is a great opportunity to encourage turn-taking while counting to see how fast each child completes the course. You can extend this further by providing stopwatches and digital timers for children to use. Older children might be able to rank the children’s attempts from fastest to slowest if they can understand that the fastest person is the person who completed the course in the least amount of time (this can be a difficult concept to grasp). Providing children with clipboards, paper and pencils will give opportunities for them to record each other’s times.

Dens Building dens is great for physical development and thinking mathematically, as children need to think about shape and space when they place objects together. Children could be invited to build a den using a tarpaulin as the roof. This will require them to think about the size of the tarpaulin and how they will need to find other objects to hold it in place. I try to make useful comments rather than telling children how to do something. You could say things like ‘I wonder if we should make the den smaller?’ or ‘Could we use something to hold the tarpaulin in place?’

Nature

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hildren are curious about the world around them and what better resource is there than nature? It is all around us and it changes all the time, which means that the children are always exploring something new. Children can learn about nature whilst taking it in with all their senses: they can feel the rain, hear the wind and stamp among leaves. This helps to make nature a valuable resource for children to engage with.

The type of setting you have will determine what type of spaces you can provide for nature. If your setting is not a forest school or doesn’t have a natural outdoor space, you could make use of local natural areas or bring nature inside your setting. Some outdoor settings don’t include much nature in them! You can improve this with simple ideas, for example, add a plant pot full of shells or a tyre filled with mud or woodchips.

It’s possible that the time children spend in your outdoor area may be their only opportunity to be outside, so try to provide as much outdoor activity as possible.

Even with no natural resources whatsoever, children can use the weather to think about maths: sequencing how the sun changes throughout the day, writing down a tally of how many times it rains in a week, or even talking about the shape and size of the moon.

THE PLANT LIFECYCLE The outdoor environment is a treasure trove for maths; from looking at seasonal changes to observing plants, there are lots of ways to encourage mathematical thinking. Planting and growing will give children an understanding of time as we talk about the growing process and when things will happen.

For older children, you could create a chart for them to document the plant lifecycle. For example, encourage children to write down when they planted the seeds, when they first noticed the seeds sprouting, when they first noticed a leaf growing, all the way up to when the plant is re-potted and beyond.

Extending this further, you could create a watering chart where the children take it in turns to water the plants daily, noting down the time and date and more specifically the amount of water they used.

COUNTING AND COMPARING OUTDOORS There are plenty of opportunities to collect and count in the outdoor environment, and you can add numbers in lots of different ways to encourage counting. For example:

• Provide numbered resources such as numbered plant pots.

• Display house number plaques along the side of a fence.

• Create a number line using string or chalk.

• Display numbers on wooden discs near a sandpit.

One of my cohort’s favourite games is to find the biggest stone or stick in the garden, which allows us to compare different properties such as width and length. We have extended this by seeing who can find the heaviest stick or stone, which encourages the children to deepen their understanding and to notice, for example, that the biggest stone might not always be the heaviest.

Comparing things from the natural environment can be really interesting because natural items vary so much in shape, size, colour and weight. Take leaves, for example: a sycamore leaf might be wider than a beech leaf but a beech leaf might be longer than a sycamore leaf. And it isn’t just size or length that we can compare, but also how many points the leaves have, what colours they are, what patterns the veins make, etc. There really are endless mathematical possibilities in nature.

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Looking for Learning: Maths through Play