Play by Rupesh

Play in itself is the biggest source of learning and to develop thinking. Let’s not curtail play in the name of academics nor shall we interrupt the play by imposing our ideas about play .

Sharing about play, Thank you Rupesh for sharing the resources.

Let children play.

The longer the child plays, the richer the mathematical activity she engages in. This is because the materials themselves have math built into them. The rows and columns of the egg crate; the colors and shape of the eggs; the fact that the eggs can separate into halves—all of these are mathematical features that kids notice and begin to play with as they spend time at the table.

We have seen four-year-old spend an hour playing with the eggs.I have observed that the children who receive the least instruction from parents, volunteers are the most likely to persist. These are the children who will spend 20 minutes or more exploring the possibilities in the eggs.

The children who receive instructions from adults are least likely to persist. When a parent or volunteer says, “Make a pattern,” kids are likely to do one of two things:

Make a pattern, quit, and move to something else
Stop playing without making a pattern

We adults have a responsibility to let the children play. We can be there to listen to their ideas as they do. We can play in parallel by getting our own egg cartons out and filling these cartons with our own ideas

But when we tell kids to “make a pattern” or “use the colors”, we are asking the children to fill that carton with our ideas, rather than allowing them to explore their own.