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Blog Archive

Creating a Loose Parts Environment for Autumn and Winter Play

The term “loose parts” is all over the Internet and early childhood world these days and for good reason. I have witnessed firsthand how the learning changed when we brought in natural loose parts! Loose parts are so full of math opportunities and problem-solving and vocabulary-building opportunities. So, what exactly are loose parts? Loose parts are […]

Delightful Dandelion Days

Every spring we look forward to the arrival of anything green, growing and grand!  We especially delight with the beauty of dandelions; the lovely weeds those gardeners everywhere try to rid from their lawns!  Dandelions bring a lot of math adventures to our program and this year succeeded beyond our expectations!  Our neighborhood park is […]

Fairy House Families

After attending a math workshop (Do we want to admit this was a Math At Home training?), I received a container of what I would normally call, “Counting Bears.”  I generally do not like these so called counting “manipulatives.” They tend to be bears, in primary colors and they are used for counting, sorting by […]

Early Math in Projects: Part #4

In the last blog, I talked about children moving from representing buildings from the neighborhood to designing their own building, representing that building with unit blocks, and sketching a re-designed version of what they built with blocks. Once they were done with this process, we wanted them to take some time and reflect on what […]

Early Math in Projects: Part #3

In the last couple of blogs, I talked about children having the opportunity to represent buildings from the neighborhood using different materials. Children were also able to experience the buildings in different forms: seeing the building in person on a walk, reflecting on the photos of the buildings, constructing the buildings with table blocks and […]