Integrating Guided Play and Hands-On Learning: Insights and Application
Play in the Primary Grades
How Educators Can Embed Guided Play to Meet Curricular Goals
Robyn Ridgley, Katherine A. Mangione, and Martin Ridgley
The first graders in Mr. Ridgley’ s class are working on adding sums up to 20. During math time, he invites three children to gather around a gameboard and introduces two, 10-sided dice that look like jewels.“ The purpose of our game today is to roll the dice and find the sum of the two numbers,” he says.“ You’ ll find the number representing your sum on the gameboard and place your chip on the numeral. When you have three chips in a row, you’ ll have completed the round.”
Mr. Ridgley’ s plan is to support children’ s addition fluency and note the strategies they use, which meet his state’ s math standard of using“ mental strategies flexibly and efficiently to develop fluency in addition and subtraction
42 Young Children
Fall 2026