Provocations to Support Children's Interest in Math

Today teachers provided 3 different types of scales that the children could explore using different items around the kindergarten - kitchen electronic, mechanical scales and some bathroom scales. Throughout the morning children used the scales in different ways to support their own interests at that time, like Bailee who weighed an orange and a manderin before preparing to share with her friends at kotahitanga. With some encouragement Bailee, Pippa and Ginny estimated which piece of fruit they thought would be the heaviest. All girls pointing to the orange, so we put it on the electronic scales, it was 278grams and the mandarin was 134. We wrote down the numbers as they came up on the screen for the group to see on paper. So now we have weighed them which piece of fruit is the heaviest we asked,  "The orange" Pippa relied!

Providing these resources was a result of conversations that the teaching team had around play yesterday (outlined in previous BLOG post) where intentional teaching strategies were set to explore, plan for and provide experiences that encourage exploration of different mathematical concepts within all areas of children's play - ensuring that it is relevant and meaningful to the context they are in.

These intentional teaching strategies included:

- We will increase the use of mathematical language that we use with children to expand their understanding and support their ability to apply it in real play such as measuring the length of different equipments, comparing different shapes, sizes or lengths.

 - We will do this by setting up problems that use mathmatical systems, symbols and tools to solve the problem.

 - We will ensure that there are relevant mathematical tools in different areas of the Kindergarten for children to explore and use in a purposeful and meaningful way, for example Scales in the play dough area, tape measures in the carpentry. 

 - As we continue to observe and work with children in their play we will continue to reflect and plan forward for their continuing interest.

Taken from our morning group planning, term 3 2015.