“Here’s a circle!” calls out two-year-old Eleanor.

“My mom calls that a cylinder, and it goes over here,” says four-year-old Nadia.

“A silly-der?” Eleanor is puzzled.

The room erupts in laughter as Nadia gently corrects her: “No, Eleanor, it’s a cylinder.”

Eleanor gamely gives it another try. “Oh, a silly-her?” she asks with a giggle, happy to be the center of attention.

This playful exchange continues, with Eleanor determined to say “cylinder” correctly, much to the hilarity of her friends.

Finally, she nails it: “Your mom calls this a cylinder!” Applause and dancing follow in a lighthearted celebration of Eleanor’s success.

In this vibrant block center gathering, we have all of the ingredients for deep learning. Movement, physical touch, mentoring, and experimentation are all at play.

When mistakes happen, they’re met with laughter rather than frustration and friends are always ready and willing to lend a hand.

This rich environment fosters conversation, cooperation, and problem-solving as the children engage in hands-on learning while meeting important educational standards. 

It’s nearing lunchtime, and the children in the block area have somehow caught a case of “pick up” fever.

This is rare, as many of you know. We usually have one older child who assumes the role of “organizer.” This is the child who likes to put the unit blocks in a specific place and in a specific order, while the younger children struggle just to find room on any available surface.

So when I see the blocks being organized on the shelves by attributes, I stop to observe the collaboration and child-led learning that is unfolding in front of my eyes.

“The long blocks go here,” Nadia instructs her younger friends. “If you have two shorter blocks, you can make a long block. See?”

“We can put two triangles together to make a square and stack them here,” Sasha chimes in.

The excitement in the block area is contagious as the children collaborate, explore, and learn together.

As I observe Saaliha, I can almost see the wheels turning in her mind. She carefully experiments with the blocks, turning them this way and that, determined to find the right fit. It’s deep thinking at its finest. When she sees a friend successfully place a block, she mimics her friend’s technique and—success! There’s no grand celebration, just a quiet determination to find another matching block to solidify her learning.

This is where the magic of hands-on learning happens. Saaliha’s brain might not have grasped these concepts on paper, but the tactile experience of handling blocks and using vocabulary in context has helped her put the pieces of the puzzle together.

As educators, we need to focus on making learning real. The Early Learning Standard is met, but more importantly, Saaliha is developing critical cognitive skills in a way that feels natural and engaging.

These vibrant moments of play offer invaluable opportunities for observation. During these times, we can step back and truly witness the learning that is happening in front of us. 

The block center is often the epicenter of these play buzz moments. Blocks are universally appealing and developmentally appropriate for young children, making them an essential resource in any early childhood setting.

If your program doesn’t have a dedicated block area, consider advocating for one. A well-designed block center can enrich the life of every child and help foster the development of a wide variety of skills.

If you already have a block area, try to carve out longer periods of time for uninterrupted play. Get down on the floor, observe the learning, and check off the early learning standards that the children are meeting. You’ll see so much happening in that corner of your early childhood center, from math and science to geography and art!

The block center is more than just a space for play: It’s a rich environment for building cognitive, social, and emotional skills.

Through block play, children learn about shapes, sizes, and spatial relationships—all while practicing essential communication and cooperation skills.

Let’s embrace these moments of discovery and learning. By fostering a playful atmosphere, you are not only meeting educational standards but also fostering a lifelong love of learning.

So, let’s dive into the block corner and watch our young learners thrive!

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It’s another 90-degree morning, and we’re going deep into water play to keep our budding mathematicians as cool and happy as possible on this humid, sultry day.

I glance over just in time to catch three-year-old Tahin playing with one of the small watering cans. It’s obvious that no one has mentored him on the fine art of submerging his watering can to fill it up with water. I observe him closely as he problem-solves.

First, he reaches for a small yellow cup, fills it up with water and tries to pour it into the small opening of his watering can. Most of the water runs down the side of the watering can, but he keeps trying, oblivious to his surroundings as he repeats the process over and over with the same disappointing results.

But this little guy is resilient. He doesn’t get frustrated or angry, he doesn’t give up and he doesn’t ask for help. He persists!

Tahin, like most children, can spend countless hours playing with water, pouring it back and forth, watching it spill over the edge of the cup, splashing gently and pouring some more.

My love of water play has been well documented on this blog, and it’s one of our favorite summer learning adventures.

Math might not be the first thing you think of when you think about water play, but water presents many opportunities to explore one of the main areas of mathematics, which is measurement!

If you’ve been using your water table as a “sensory table” filled with something other than water during the winter months, now is a great time to move it outdoors for some long periods of math play.

Children are naturally drawn to water and this naturally occurring (read “free”) element fosters curiosity, imagination, investigation and experimentation. What more could one ask of a learning tool?

I watch as Tahin abandons his first idea and tries a different approach, using the yellow cup to fill a larger yellow bowl, which he then uses to pour the water into his watering can.

When Tahin empties the smaller yellow cup into the larger yellow bowl, he also begins to learn which container holds more and which container holds less.

He also has the opportunity to use the cup as a unit of measurement and see how many cups it takes to fill the larger bowl.

Tahin carefully lifts the larger bowl, moves it close to his plastic watering can and tips it to pour the water into the can. The bowl’s wider rim and the greater volume of water are a winning combination.

Tahin’s second method proves to be successful, and the watering can is soon filled to the brim. This is persistence and problem-solving at its finest!

Water play is always developmentally appropriate, regardless of a child’s physical condition, age, language, gender or culture.

When children are engaged in water play, they tend to lose themselves in the activity and can spend long periods of time experimenting and playing. This encourages children to focus.

Any activity that requires sustained focus will increase a child’s attention span, sharpen problem-solving skills and enable the child to solve more complex problems later in life.

Open-ended water play also presents opportunities for children to use both sides of the brain as they problem-solve.

Children can explore and problem-solve in any manner that they choose, which forces them to be creative as they try out new ideas.

This is an example of executive functioning at work! Executive function skills help us make a plan and troubleshoot when the plan is underway.

Eve (pictured below) is developing and practicing her executive function skills through play!

We like to stimulate the imaginations of our early learners by changing our water-play tools frequently.

Here are just a few of the tools that we add to the mix on different days:

• Throw some ice cubes into the water and give the children slotted spoons to fish them out.
• Scatter sponges around the water play area. This often leads to activities such as washing the bikes or the plastic animals that we keep in the sand play area.
• Styrofoam meat trays and toy boats can be used to transport those plastic animals in water as well.
• Funnels, soup ladies and turkey basters are also big hits.
• Condiment squeeze bottles are great for building grip strength and strengthening the muscles of little hands.

Whenever children play with water, they are exploring mathematical concepts such as volume, capacity, size and shape.

There are many good reasons to bring water play into your outdoor play space. It’s a fun, refreshing pastime that will chase away the children’s lethargy on muggy summer afternoons—and it’s chock full of learning and skill-building opportunities.

What better way to knock out those early learning standards when the temperature and humidity soar?

“Look!” squeals three-year-old Eleanor.  “I can pick up these two balls! It’s magic!”

Have you ever seen young children playing with magnets? The “magical” properties of magnets never fail to captivate early learners and spark a play buzz!

Children learn by investigating, observing and figuring out how things work. Magnets fuel that curiosity in a way that is simple and accessible.

As they explore the properties of magnets through play, children develop a deeper understanding of scientific principles by asking questions such as “why” magnets stick together and “how” magnets work.

Magnetic play helps lay the foundation for further investigations as we guide the children through activities such as developing hypotheses and theories, solving problems and making predictions. By observing and studying cause and effect, our young STEM explorers can begin to develop a basic understanding of concepts such as magnetic attraction, magnet strength and magnetic forces and fields.

Playing with magnets is a great way to introduce STEM into a child’s life. If you need to record observations, this is a great time to take a seat and watch as children incorporate predictions and conclusions into the learning experience.

To set the stage for magnetic exploration, I put out a wooden tray filled with magnetic wands and magnets in a variety of shapes and sizes. Then I give each of the children an aluminum tray to define their play space and keep the magnetic balls from rolling off of the table onto the floor.

When children add magnets or remove them from the tray, they are learning about math concepts such as more, less, off and on. They’re also learning about patterns, shapes and sizes.

I also fill simple sensory bins with colored rice or coffee beans. Then I add magnetic and non-magnetic objects, as well as a magnetic wand for finding the “treasures.” I set two baskets nearby to encourage the children to sort their objects.

“Is this magnetic?” asks one child. “This should work,” says another. “It’s silver!”

Making a prediction means focusing on what we think will happen next based on our prior knowledge. It’s considered a guess if we have no prior knowledge. We can help children develop their prediction skills when we are playing with magnets, reading a story or finding our way home on a walk.

When the children at our early learning center play with magnetic wands and balls, they love to “catch” the balls on the wand and count how many they have. Sometimes I will see them intentionally create patterns.

Playing with magnets is a powerful math and science activity in early childhood classrooms because it fosters conversation and exploration and provides a fun and engaging incentive for children to make predictions and observe outcomes.

If you can, give the children a long period of time to investigate the magic of magnets and work through their theories. This extended time to conduct STEM investigations and learn through focused play is a gift that they may not be given in their future academic lives.

It will amaze you when you see the amount of time that children will spend exploring the magnets on their tray. It’s a calm, quiet and very, very focused activity that slows down even our most frenetic friends.

As we continue to play, we engage in a discussion about the forces that pull magnets together. We keep it pretty basic. This young group hasn’t shown any interest yet in the whys and the hows of magnetic forces and fields. They are too enchanted by the magic of it all. I have been down this trail before. When the brain is ready, the questions will be asked and we will have the resources available to answer their questions and push the experiments and investigations a wee bit further out of their comfort zone. There will be many more experiments for extended learning. But, for now, exploring the magic of magnetism suits us all just fine! 

A few words of caution. Magnets are dangerous if ingested. We hope that our students no longer put everything in their mouths, but we can’t count on it. You know your students better than anyone. It is best to err on the side of caution and use large magnets that cannot possibly fit into a child’s mouth if you are at all concerned. It will make the day of magnetic play more enjoyable for YOU if you don’t have to worry.

Stay safe and take care!

They also created this snowman building activity which was perfect for toddlers.

The boxes were sized so they could be stacked.  They had clues on them to help the children figure out which one was the head, and which was the body.  The addition of the hats to put on top was genius. Not only was this a really well-designed but it was also supported very effectively by the teachers.

One teacher, while helping build a snowperson, “self-talked” throughout.  She said things like, “Oooh, I think I will put the biggest box on the bottom and the one with the nose on the top, so it can be the head.  The middle-sized box can go in the middle, for the snowperson’s middle.”  Self-talk is a useful strategy when working with preverbal children and “just beginning to talk” toddlers.  They have the understandings of the words but may not be able to produce them yet.  This strategy encourages critical thinking by expressing the concept of “planning” and then “execution” with the children.

Many of the toddlers I observed were able to stack the boxes and most could figure out that the box with the face went on top.  The 2 bottom boxes were confusing since the only clue to their order was their size.  However, their sizes were not extreme enough to be really visible and the boxes were slightly different shapes, which can also lead to confusion.

So…

If I were to recreate this activity, I would choose three boxes of differing sizes but of the same shape.  I would make sure that they were distinctly different sizes so the measurable quantity could be seen to a toddler.  I would also add one more visual clue to each box.  I might put feet on the bottom box and buttons only on the middle box.  You could choose your own clues, but be sure to include them so the children have enough information to build successfully.

Yesterday my student set up an activity at one of the tables that children could work on during free choice time.  She had cut out paper t-shirts in 3 colors and in 3 sizes.  There were markers and glue with a variety of things that could be glued to the t-shirts.  As the children were sitting down, she asked them if they wanted a little t-shirt or a big t-shirt and if they wanted yellow, blue, or green.  At first, each of the children simply asked for a “big, yellow t-shirt, or a small, green t-shirt.”  The last child asked for a “big, blue t-shirt” so my student took out a big, blue t-shirt and handed it to him.  He said, “No, I want a big one.”  She responded with, “This is a big blue t-shirt.”  This went back and forth a couple more times until he pointed to one of the other children and said, “Like his.”

Lo and behold, there were 3 sizes of t-shirts: small, medium and large.  Since he didn’t have the vocabulary to explain what he wanted, he used the vocabulary that was given to him: Big and Small.  However, these choices didn’t work because he wanted “the biggest” t-shirt which only works if there are varying sizes available.  Big and small leaves out a whole category – medium.  When we discussed this after my observation, my student knew that she was only using the two adjectives, but thought it was preferable since the children already know Big and Small and she was confident that they could describe their preferences with these two categories.

We talked about how children build knowledge based on what they already know.  If the children already have cognitive structures in place for Big and Small then it makes sense to introduce another concept that builds on those.  I suggested that she could use Small, Smaller, and Smallest to describe the variations, or Big, Bigger, and Biggest which would also work.  She could go back to the original idea and use Small, Medium, and Large since those would be the accurate terms for sizes of clothing.  It doesn’t really matter as long as the relationship between the sizes is emphasized.

This is a good example of how opportunities arise at all times of the day to support early math concepts.  I am so glad I was there to see it.