Play in the Classroom

Play and Mathematical Concepts

Play-related activities that are appropriate for young children in mathematics most often focus on the child's learning symmetry, pattern recognition, sorting, counting, number value, calculating, measuring, and problem-solving. Math concepts are practiced during dramatic play as children take on roles at math learning centers. Children can find great joy while counting, calculating, and using coupons at an imaginary grocery store. Other common activities include using play money to pay for imaginary gasoline pumped into play vehicles. Weighing and measuring packages, calculating postage costs, exchanging money, and sorting mail are also customary at the post office learning center. Young children also play with math manipulatives to count, sort, match, compare, identify patterns, and form math sentences.

John Dewey, philosopher and psychologist, applied his method of hands-on learning to accomplish math concepts indirectly through project play. For example, at the Dewey School, children created a farm, using and expanding their knowledge of planning when constructing buildings or planting imaginary crops. Reasoning, problem-solving, and pattern recognition were also evident as children explored units of measurement, calculations, and volume while playing.

Math behaviors in older children include creative thinking, planning, and reasoning. Children apply these behaviors while playing a variety of common games involving cards, number puzzles, and tangrams. Chutes and Ladders, a popular board game of chance, uses a number line for children to count the number of spaces to move their playing piece based on the spin of a dial. Another classic game, Dominoes, focuses on counting spots. Players match tiles having like numbered ends. Block play involving interlocking pieces fosters the child's understanding of space, shapes, quantity, measurement, pattern, and symmetry. Hand-held technology games and those involving calculators are also part of classroom play.

Play activities include math when number cues start or end the game, game or turns are measured in time, and scores are kept. As children count the players in each group or team, they learn how to negotiate when teams are uneven in number. Counting on fingers or guessing numbers may determine the starting team or player. Children can also keep score while playing table games such as miniature bowling, skittles, and paper football. Math concepts play a role in classroom play activities.

Play and Science Concepts

Albert Einstein, considered by many to be a genius, believed that imagination is more important than knowledge. He played with many of his ideas to help formulate his theories. Imagination provides the ideas and the impetus to test possibilities. Teaching science through play gives students the opportunity to explore, experiment, and discover. These steps lead to newfound knowledge.

At science centers, children play with ideas related to gravity, flotation, action and reaction, balance and stability, magnetism, machinery, and electricity. Balls become scientific objects as children compare and discover through play how differing sizes, weights, shapes, textures, or materials affect bounce ability or gravitational pull. Water play is an avenue for science inquiry as children question what objects float, explore by testing collected items, count, measure volume and weights added to floating objects, and continue discovering through play. Children experience concepts related to water flow by using marbles to roll through cardboard tubes. Shadow play displays the concept of [Page 555]an existing relationship between the source of light, and the object blocking that light. Children create shadow shapes, puppets and pictures using objects and body parts to form two dimensional silhouettes. Balance and stability are explored when using playing cards to build houses and structures. Small cardboard boxes or blocks can be placed one on top of another to create a balanced column. Learning centers can contain science play objects such as kaleidoscopes, spinning tops, slinkys, pinwheels, circuit boards, magnetic toys, models, bubbles, and ingredients for making invisible ink. Children apply their natural curiosity about the environment and how things move to their play. Fascinated by living creatures, children observe distinct behaviors of classroom pets. Hamsters, gerbils and hermit crabs are taken out of their cages and tanks for playtime. Younger children may imitate movements to become slithering snakes, crawling insects, and jumping frogs. Cloud gazing gives children the opportunity to identify and classify cloud formations. Children find it playful to observe clouds in their ever changing shapes. The concept of prediction occurs as clouds slowly transform into identifiable and creative objects.

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