October 20-23

BINGO!

Games are lots of fun and a great way to incorporate learning into the classroom. We play Bingo often using images from seasons, holidays and experiences in the classroom. Bingo gives the children an opportunity to practice many skills. They have to listen to the object being described (receptive language), look for those descriptions on their cards and then check to see if their choice matches the picture being held up (visual-spatial awareness). They finish by orally identifying and describing the picture if they have it (expressive language). We begin the year of Bingo by describing the object and holding up the picture at the same time. We will eventually move to description first and then visual after the children have searched their boards. For this first round of Fall Bingo we used Halloween spiders as markers. The children practiced calling out their "match" and placing one spider in the appropriate square. Throughout the game they counted their spiders and worked to place them in each square. These math and fine motor skills naturally occur when children are given these types of manipulatives, so we capitalize on that and ask questions/give directions to work with them. 

Pumpkin Math Centers

We noticed that this group of children immediately wants to engage with materials on our big table at the beginning of the school day. To capitalize on this we have been placing literacy and math manipulatives out for the children to explore and work with. Along with exploring and painting pumpkins, we introduced a few pumpkin math centers this week. Hands-on math centers bring learning to life. Through tactile exploration—building, sorting, measuring, and playing—young children engage multiple senses to internalize mathematical concepts. These experiences make abstract ideas concrete. When children manipulate real objects, they are literally building their understanding of numbers, operations, and spatial reasoning. Centers also promote independence and choice, allowing students to revisit concepts at their own pace and level. Moreover, centers nurture social-emotional learning—students collaborate, communicate, and solve problems together, developing perseverance and confidence as mathematicians.

Pumpkin Number Puzzles

With these manipulatives the children had to build a pumpkin puzzle. The puzzle pieces were numbered 1-10 and had to be put in order, so the children could use the picture pieces to put the pumpkin together or put the numbers in order and automatically construct the puzzle. Many of the children used number recognition and counting to place the numbers in order (or pieces that have numbers next to each other together) to gradually builld their pumpkin. There was lots of counting and "I found it!" when they found the number they were looking for, which made the gradual building of their pumpkins very engaging. The surprise at the end was that each pumpkin had a different emotional expression, so we got to review the different emotions that we have by looking at the pumpkin faces. 

Completing these math puzzles benefit the children in many ways. As they work they practice spatial awareness - the rotation and placing of the pieces helps to develop the ability to visual and understand how shapes fit together (in this case it was the visual parts of the picture). Completing puzzles requires sustained attention and focus, helping children develop the ability to concentrate on a task. Children also practice problem-solving by manipulating pieces and figuring out how they fit, which helps in the development of logical reasoning and critical thinking skills. Puzzles with numbers help preschoolers learn to recognize digits and count objects, which is essential for building early math skills (number recognition and counting).Finally, puzzles teach children the importance of patience and persistence, as they learn to work through challenges and try different solutions.