Rock balancing or CAIRNS has found its way into our play again this week!

Stacking and balancing rocks encourages math and science investigations that are always developmentally appropriate. My adrenaline starts flowing and a smile grows on my face when a two-year-old child exhibits an innate sense of how to balance many more rocks than her much-older peers. Children have their own unique gifts; we just need to give them opportunities to discover their strengths and talents.

For the record, environmentalists strongly discourage this practice because it disrupts the natural order of nature. I get that. When we are hiking or playing in the woods, we follow that rule. Our outdoor classroom has a dry creek and wonderful rocks collected from parking lots and estate sales. These are our math and science rocks that are used for play.

Children who are math-and-science ready are great problem solvers. When our friends explore the concept of stacking, they make observations, collect data and investigate shapes and sizes and weight. We count, we estimate, we balance, we hypothesize. It’s science, math, language and play all wrapped up in the beauty of nature. Nothing makes me happier than finding hidden stacks of rocks somewhere in our play yard—stacks that have been left behind by inquisitive children who didn’t need to please anyone but themselves.

Two-year-old Lauren created the “ant house” above. I love that she decorated her house with flowers. I watched as she wandered over to the sandbox on the other side of the play yard to return with a handful of sand to sprinkle on the roof. I love that intentionality and vision. I love that she is barefoot with a toenail that is black and blue and may fall off, evidence of some already-forgotten adventure that didn’t go as planned. I love that she is laying the foundation for later learning in math, science and engineering through play.

You can call it STEM, STEAM or STREAM, but it’s basic childhood play. It’s long hours of uninterrupted exploration as a child works to bring an idea to fruition. It’s the brain on fire, building the synapses of learning. It’s the cement in the foundation of a lifelong learner—the evolution of a visionary, problem-solving, risk-taking master.

I often hear early educators worry out loud about meeting the benchmarks or standards required by their programs. My tip for this is to bring in natural materials, give your children TIME to play, take photos and sit down with your standards. You will be shocked at how easy this can be. Engaging young children in daily problem-solving activities will help them develop the processing skills that pave the way for future lessons in math and science. This rock-stacking experience is all about shapes and spatial reasoning. This is geometry! This is engineering! This is spatial orientation as our rock stackers exhibit an understanding of location and ordinal position. Our young stackers are often meeting standards and benchmarks before they have the vocabulary to tell us what they are doing. They gather data about their surroundings as they figure out how to balance a specific rock in the stack. And if that rock won’t balance, they’ll try another. This is organizing data and information. They are busy making predictions about outcomes by playing with rocks.

Always bear in mind, however, that brain development varies in children.

Some children may not yet be ready to meet certain standards. Some may be advanced in one area, while others may be advanced in another.

This is when you are smarter than the standards! You can’t teach a rock to balance if the rock can’t balance. You can’t teach a brain a concept if it isn’t developmentally ready to process that concept.

This is why it’s important to reassure parents that their children will be just fine in life, regardless of their child’s test scores on any given day. You can look parents in the eye on Parent Night and share all of the standards that their children have mastered through play. Then you can assure them that play is laying the foundation for the brain development and problem-solving skills that will serve their children well throughout their lives.

So bring in the math rocks. Your students will soon be sorting, comparing and working with attributes. This is an early educator’s dream.

Best of all, it’s fun! Fun for the child, a true delight for the teacher to behold and such wonderful food for the brain.

Stay safe and keep on rocking on!

Ann Morris’s many books include Families, Bread Bread Bread, Hats Hats Hats, On the Go, and Loving. She lives in New York City. As a children’s book writer, Ann Morris has been able to successfully integrate her varied experiences in teaching young children, travel, writing, and editing. Having grown up in the polyglot public schools of New York City, where each child’s ethnic heritage was revealed by his name or by the contents of the lunch box from home filled with sausages, egg rolls, matzos, or pizza, she developed a strong Interest In cultures other than her own. “I’m a gypsy by nature,” she says. “I always have my suitcase packed.”

The books are all nonfiction, focusing on various aspects of multicultural lives that are very much the same and very much different.  The book above centers on bread from around the world.   The way she approaches each subject is to choose something that is familiar to children, for example, bread and then introduces the children to the many different ways that bread looks and tastes in different communities around the globe.  She takes something that is familiar and conceptualized for children and provides a means of further exploration of the concept.  This only works (and works really well) because children already have personal understandings about the subject matter.  Starting with what may seem mundane, she expands the child’s experience via photos of real people.

Here she looks at houses,

and here she looks at shoes.

The opportunities to talk with children about same/different, compare/contrast,  and categorizing, using these books are endless.  The photographs (taken by her husband) are brilliant.  These are a must for your classroom library.

Hairs/Pelitos by Sandra Cisneros is a beautiful bilingual book about a family – and their very different types of hair. (You might recognize these people from The House on Mango Street.) The vivid text and beautiful pictures are engaging and even young children will be able to relate to the different kinds of hair.

Happy to be Nappy by bell hooks is written in sing-song and lyrical prose and describes all sorts ways that hair is beautiful.  It uses words like “twisted,” “pleated,” “braided,” and phrases like “soft like cotton” and “full of frizz and fuzz.”

Since young children really like to think about themselves, studying these two books as a vehicle for comparing and contrasting will be immediately appealing to them. They will be able to compare/contrast the characters in the stories and themselves at the same time.  The books are rich with vocabulary that describe all sorts of hair lengths, styles, textures, and colors.  Your children will be able to find hair that is like theirs and different from theirs.

The opportunities for comparing and contrasting here (get it?) are endless.  Now set up a hair salon in your housekeeping area and expand the exploration further

Even very young children will recognize that there are 3 animals in each story – same. They will also notice that both tales have a wolf – same.   From there, the similarities get murkier while the differences become more obvious.  The 3 Pigs are brothers but the 3 Bears are a Mommy, Daddy, and Child bear – different.  There is a little girl in the bear story named Goldilocks but there are no people in the pig story – different. The Wolf is a bad guy in both stories – same, but he experiences very different fates (depending on the version you are telling!)

Even within each of these stories there are opportunities to compare and contrast.  As Goldilocks encounters different areas of the Bear’s house she notices that all of the items are the same (beds, chairs, porridge) but they are also different (firmness, size, temperature).  The Pigs all build houses but the houses are very different.

All of these similarities and differences can be described with and by the children especially if you have visual representations of the characters.  A felt board with all of the characters would work great.  Create a line down the middle of the board so the children can manipulate the characters depending on the questions you are asking.  Once you have explored both stories with the children, leave the felt board and associated pieces out for the children to explore on their own.  It is through access to the materials that they can practice telling and retelling the stories to their hearts’ content.