Edx Education Advertorial
PURPOSEFUL PLAY IN THE EARLY YEARS
BY DR. PAUL SWAN
Child Initiated
Play
Unstructured
Teacher Planned
Play
Highly
Structured
Duncan (2012)
“The play of children is not recreation;
it means earnest work. Play is the
purest intellectual production of the
human being …”
-Friedrich Froebel (The father of
Kindergarten)
E
arly Childhood settings can
vary from a loose structure,
where play may be thought of
as being ‘free’, at the whim of
the child, without adult intervention,
to highly structured settings that are
teacher-led with little or no play. This
article is aimed at the middle ground.
While participating in these tasks
children will be:
• Developing their motor skills, gross
and fine,
• Learning about patterning – the
precursor to algebra,
• Sorting and classifying – leading to
reasoning
• Mark making – recording their
experiences
• Consider the following examples
involving the big idea of patterning
Pattern
Play with a Purpose
There
are
many
opportunities
throughout the home and school day
for young children to have positive
mathematical experiences. There
is a fine line, however, between
forcing children to do something and
encouraging them to participate in an
activity. Likewise, many mathematical
opportunities are overlooked or lost in
ever busier classrooms.
In this article the term ‘Purposeful
Play’ will be used to describe planned
experiences where the teacher
provides opportunities by:
• Setting up materials and situations
with a clear purpose in mind;
• Supporting or scaffolding the
children as they become involved in
the experiences;
• Developing
vocabulary; and
Purposeful Play Opportunities
Jan - Feb 2018
A pattern is some form of regular or
systematic arrangement of shape or
numbers. A pattern implies some
underlying systematic arrangement or
structure.
Mathematics has been described as
‘the study of pattern’ (Hardy) and ‘the
science of pattern’ (Steen)
Young children need to be able to:
• Recognise a pattern,
• Copy a pattern
• Continue and complete a pattern
• Create a pattern.
mathematics
|
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Macaroni Necklace
Young children often join a linear
pattern to form a macaroni necklace.
Some children may notice that the
pattern just continues on the same
loop.
Printing Patterns
Children can use stamps to print
various patterns along a line.
• Providing
extensions
to
the
experience
that
incorporate
problem solving and reasoning.
06 |
Patterns come in many forms, such as
spatial and number patterns. Pattern
leads to the need for algebra. At this
early level, children need to be able
to talk about the patterns that they
observe and create. Some children
may spot the repeated element of the
pattern.
Class Time
Shape Patterns
Beads of different shapes (or 3D
objects may be placed in a line, e.g.
square, triangle, square, triangle,
square, triangle. Eventually other
shapes may be added. Some children
may even progress to multipart
patterns, where colour and shape are
used to define the pattern.