should cost, the class comes to an agreement, and one group writes these prices on a board nearby.
When the sale begins, teachers and students from other classes as well as administrative staff pass by, ordering snowballs of various quantities. Mr. Schulz, a fourth-grade teacher, places an order for two bundles of three snowballs. The children first determine whether they have enough snowballs to fill an order, and they figure out that Mr. Schulz is ordering six snowballs in total.
“ One set of three snowballs costs $ 4,” says one of the group members.
“ So how much money do I owe you in total?” Mr. Schulz asks.
The children consider this question, and after a moment of contemplation, Sally says,“ Four plus four equals eight. So that means you need to pay $ 8.”
Elsewhere, Ms. Rivera observes that Alan, who has been struggling with addition in word problems, is especially enthusiastic during the sale. He is able to make calculations and fulfill orders more easily than when solving problems on the worksheet from the math curriculum package. Naima, a multilingual learner whose home language is Arabic, uses a chart Ms. Rivera has made that allows her to communicate with buyers about the pricing.
After the Snowball Sale ends and the children return to their classroom, Ms. Rivera hands out paper and writing utensils so that each group can record how many snowballs they sold, which size snowballs sold the best, and how much money they made. Ms. Rivera structures the questions as word problems to reinforce the mathematical concepts behind the project.
This vignette demonstrates how guided play can make abstract mathematical concepts accessible and meaningful for young children. Children chose their own grouping strategies, negotiated with partners, and decided how to fulfill each order, giving them genuine agency over their mathematical reasoning. At the same time, Ms. Rivera’ s role was intentional by
› Prompting children to sort snowballs by size and quantity
› Posing challenges, in the form of questions, that nudged children just beyond their current understanding and prompted them to articulate their thinking( Wickstrom & Pyle 2025)
› Providing concrete, visual materials to help children build the foundational number sense that later supports more formal mathematical reasoning( Wickstrom & Pyle 2025)
› Choosing an outdoor setting with nature materials to encourage access and participation across learners
› Placing children into groups so that peer partnerships provided natural language modeling throughout
› Incorporating visual quantity cards and gesturebased prompts so that multilingual learners could demonstrate mathematical understanding without relying solely on verbal explanation
Crucially, school leaders supported this kind of experiential, outdoor learning by protecting instructional time outside the classroom and encouraging teachers to design learning experiences that connected mathematical concepts to real-world contexts. For more specific recommendations for school leaders, see“ Supporting Educators Through Professional Learning and Leadership” on page 26.
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