Subitizing – Subitizing is a math activity that is also a guessing game. It’s fun for the children to see how close they can come to guessing how many beads are in the metal container without counting. To them it’s simply a game. While it is a fun activity, it also helps to build foundational math skills that will help them with larger math problems in the future.
The math benefits of building with blocks – Using the wooden blocks of various shapes and sizes helps the children to navigate building structures in ways that they envision. Through trial and error, each child is building engineering skills through the exploration of not only broad shape, but also weight, curvature, and size. The more a child explores building, the more their confidence grows and the more complex their structures grow, too. Plus, all of this is happening while having fun and developing cognitive skills!
Magna-Tile puzzles – The Magna-Tile puzzles we did in 3B this week are a fun way for the children to utilize their cognitive skills to determine which sizes and shapes of Magna-Tiles are needed to create the pictures on the puzzle page in front of them. This is another engaging way, outside of the benefits of building, to use these building materials as teaching tools.
