“I did it! Look! I did it! I hammered it all the way down!” shouts three-year-old Gabe with pride.

This is our preschoolers’ first day of learning how to hammer nails into stumps. “Playing with dangerous tools” is one of the top six activities that children enjoy when engaging in “risky” play. Risky play is about boundary testing, which leads to greater self-confidence, increased resilience and better risk-management skills. Today’s activity—which teaches life skills along with math and science—is a popular one with our preschoolers.

We want the children in our care to develop and understand relationships with objects, places and people. In math, we refer to these as spatial relationships. To help foster the development of spatial awareness, we must provide opportunities for young children to explore and investigate locations, positions, directions and shapes. As we build the foundation for spatial awareness, we are introducing children to geometry, perspective, measurement, size, composition and decomposition.

Children love tools, but we worry about safety, risk, liability and the comfort level of administrators and parents. Here’s how we “baby-stepped” our way into the world of tools. First, we prepared our logs by pounding large roofing nails into the top of each log:

Then we set up a work area. We used chalk to draw a large circle around each log and explained that each circle represented a DANGER ZONE. These circles have proven to be very effective visual cues for our young learners. Before the hammering started, we discussed the following rules: “No one can walk into a DANGER ZONE except for the one child who will be hammering in that specific DANGER ZONE. One student, one stump, one hammer. No one can enter anyone else’s circle. The hammer doesn’t leave the circle.”

Our work area looked like this:

Next, we distributed safety glasses, hard hats and work gloves. If you are three years old and decked out in equipment like this, you know that you’re engaged in serious business right from the start. We quickly learned, however, that the hard hard hats slipped down over little faces, and that the gloves didn’t allow for a great grip because they were too large for little hands. You may have better luck, but we came to the conclusion that the Dollar Tree safety glasses were sufficient to convey the idea that this was “Serious Business” and dispensed with the hard hats and work gloves.

We didn’t have tools that were the right size for the children when we first introduced the use of tools at our center, so we used what we had. But don’t let that stop you. The children will figure it out. If the hammer is too big, they will grip the handle higher up for better control. This is problem-solving. When administrators and parents see the safeguards that you’ve put in place—as well as the skills and confidence that young children gain through this type of hands-on play—it will be easier to secure the funding that you need to buy child-sized tools for your little carpenters in the future.

During the first week or two, the children will concentrate on simply hitting the nails. But, as time goes by, they will learn how to start the nails as well. As the children manipulate tools, they will learn about weight, balance, strength and the textures of the materials. They will develop better eye-hand coordination and dexterity, as well as fine-motor skills, which will help them hold a pencil when that time comes. Hands-on learning with tools also teaches children concepts such as problem-solving, counting and measuring.

Start out small. Baby step your way into playing with tools. The math and science are already incorporated into this toolbox. Trust yourself and the kids. If you build it, they will come.

Once kids have been exposed to the Balance Scale as a tool to explore weight, you can see if they want to make their own balances out of simple materials like paper plates and hangers.

Children can make holes on the edges of the plates with a hole-punch and then put the string through the holes.  They will need help tying them on and making sure the lengths are even.  Once they have two plates complete, they are tied to a hanger and the children can use them to move around the room balancing and weighing to their heart’s desire.

Paper plates can be flimsy, so choose sturdy ones so there is less frustration.  This can also be done with paper cups so items can be put inside and the children don’t have to worry about them sliding off.

Give it a try.

I’ve already written about using a classroom balance that encourages children to weigh objects “relatively” to a standard weight or “relatively” to another object.  Through trial and error, they can see if an object is lighter or heavier than another object and then adjust the balance until they make it the same.

In supermarkets, there are large scales for weighing fruits and vegetables.  When items are placed in the basket underneath, the dial moves and the weight can be read. They also have scales that weigh items on top.  These can be digital or analog.

Bathroom scales weigh people as do scales at the doctor’s office.  These can look very different but they do exactly the same job.

I think it would be really interesting to have several scales available simultaneously for children to explore.  I know that most of us don’t have access to some of these machines, but keep your eyes open at garage sales, on Craig’s list, or in the newspaper.  We have an antique doctor’s scale on our back deck that we inherited from a friend.  Not only is it beautiful, but it still works.

This book is filled with really great ideas that begin with an exploration of weight.  Over the next couple of weeks I want to explore balance and weight as a Thursday Theme of November.  I am going to weave in some ideas of abundance and scarcity as well because November is often the time we think about the celebration of the harvest.

Balance

As a start, have children close their eyes and place an object in each of their hands.  Ask them which one feels heavier?  It is OK if they open their eyes  even though they may be confused by the appearance of the objects.  If one of the objects is bigger, the child may naturally believe that is is heavier. It doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong since you will follow it up with an exercise to find out which one is actually heavier.  Be sure to use the word lighter as well while you explore.

Now break out the classroom balance.  Place the objects on either side of the balance to discover which is heavier.  Start with dissimilar objects (a book and a marble) so the difference is remarkable.  Later, il you use two objects that are similar (i.e., a grapefruit and an apple) it might be less obvious to the children but more fun to explore.

These pictures were taken in an older 2’s classroom.  The two children balanced the fruits from the housekeeping area for a really long time.  As I observed them, they put dissimilar fruits on each side and tried to add fruit and take away fruit to get the balance to stay even.

Duh!  Of course they did. It makes perfect sense that “balance” and “young children” and “games” leads to “balance beams,” “running games,” and “big, outdoor play.”  It got me thinking about how lucky we are that the concepts we are meant to cover in the early childhood curriculum can be infused in broad and  meaningful ways.

If “balance” is this month’s theme, then it stands to reason that children should explore balance in a variety of ways.  As they develop physically, they are continually exploring their own personal sense of balance, first while crawling, later by toddling, eventually by walking, and finally by running, skipping, and hopping.

These games provide another avenue for children to explore balance.  Remember to reinforce the mathematical concepts and encourage children to distribute the weight so it is the “same on both sides”.

HOME MADE BALANCING GAMES

Here are a few examples of fun home-made relays you can do with your children to stimulate their balance. They will enjoy doing them and have lots of fun.

 

PENGUIN WALK

All you need is a couple of bean bags, or you can make little bags filled with uncooked rice. All the children line up at the start line and they put their “egg” (the beanbag) on top of their feet and then they try to walk like a penguin, without dropping the egg. The first child who can make it to the finish line is the winner. It’s a very easy game, but it is hilarious to see the children “wobble” like a penguin and they will have good laughs too!

POTATO AN D SPOON RACE

A hilarious and famous party game! In this relay game all the players divide into teams and every team gets a spoon with a potato on it. Now the children need to complete the distance till turning point and back without dropping the potato and then give the spoon to the next player in the team. If the potato drops, that player of the team has to start again at the starting line. The first team to have all its players complete the course is the winner. A balance relay game for 4 years and up.

HOLD THE ORANGE

This relay game is played in pairs. Every pair stands face to face with each other and try to pinch an orange between their foreheads without using their hands. Now every pair has to complete a distance without dropping the orange and it’s not allowed to use hands to hold it in place. A fun balancing race game.

BALANCE CHALLENGE

For this balance challenge you need a piece of wide adhesive tape, like duct tape or other white or grey tape. Make a straight line on the floor with the tape about 10 feet long and 3 inches wide. This is the balancing “beam”. Have the children walk over it and like in Simon Says invent more and more challenging tasks for the children. Watch their feet to check if they stay on the beam. Useful tasks for their balance: have them walk the line with a book on their head, backwards, hopping on one foot, or with a book on their head and something in their hands and so on. Use your imagination and have fun!

 

Reprinted from Best Children’s Games website

We received this game as a birthday present when Noah was 3 and we played it for the next couple of years.  The premise is this…

Pippo, the waiter, needs to clear all of the dishes off of the tables.  Children take turns moving him around the restaurant piling the dirty dishes on his trays until they topple over.  The game requires patience and steady hands but is really about balancing the dishes equally so that they don’t topple.

Children use their fine motor skills to place the dishes on top of each other, but it is their spatial skills that are honed while playing.  They have to figure out that the larger dishes should go below the smaller dishes, that the round sides will not balance well and that the two sides need to be balanced equally.

This game is beautifully made; small wooden dishes come in a little drawstring bag.  The board is colorful and beautiful to look at.  Pippo himself is a little carved wooded figure with a large flat head that can be used to carry dishes as well.

Children will use these bears in more ways than you can imagine. Some will play with them, as if they were miniature dolls. Others will sort them, count them, create patterns with them and organize them into families with larger bears representing the grown-ups and the smaller bears representing the children.

The bears are also proportionally weighted so they are a perfect item to be weighed on a scale. We will be looking at the Bucket Balance next week.

A fun game that I used to play with the bears was “The Trading Game”.  You begin by portioning out several bears to the children and yourself.  You then ask the children whether they want to “trade” their bears.  You can apply values to the bears (the large bears are worth 2 small bears, etc) and you ask the children to trade.  It is fun to see how the children approach the game.  Some think having “more” bears is the goal.  Others think that having bigger bears is the goal.  This can create a great discussion about value and equality.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.