The 3-4 year olds in the Little Garden classroom wanted to care for the blueberry plants next to school. Small committees were then formed, with each child selecting their own committee, to help sustain the plants. During their small committee work, their work naturally entailed mathematical concepts, as detailed in this classroom journal.
There is so much happening in the committees, and we want to use this journal as a window into some of the developments happening with the Protection and Gift Giving committees. This journal will also be a window into how we intentionally and organically embed meaningful, authentic math learning experiences within inquiry work.
“Since the notion of number can
emerge only out of the child's putting all kinds of things into all kinds of
relationships, the first principle of teaching in the importance of encouraging
children to be alert and put all kinds of objects, events, and actions into all
kinds of relationships.”
– Constance Kamii, "Number in
Preschool and Kindergarten
[L]ogical-mathematical knowledge (involving the construction of knowledge about relationships between objects) is constantly being developed as young children create their understanding of the world. An especially important part of this process for 3-4 year-olds is the process of categorizing things, people, experiences - sorting and organizing their understanding about who or what they come in contact with based on the data they are gathering. Based in their growing awareness of the world around them, and their role in it, 3-4 year-old children are seeking to find meaning about these experiences, materials, relationships they are connected to.
Within the Blueberry Inquiry, the children have been testing and exploring a variety of materials to represent their thinking, ideas, and plans. It is our goal to provide opportunities to further develop their relationship to these materials - perhaps a child will solidify their thinking about which rocks should be used to build the wall after using them in a new way, or perhaps they will decide their prior idea won't work and they need to try something different. This is all happening in the context of the group, where the children can accept, reject, or integrate another's perspectives alongside their peers. Coming from a social-constructivist point of view, we know learning and knowledge-construction to be a reciprocal process that happens within relationships. This is equally true for logical-mathematical learning, "When a child is confronted with another child's idea that conflicts with his, he is usually motivated to think about the problem again, and either revise his idea or find an argument to defend it."
On the last day of school before the Thanksgiving break, Dorian (on the Gift Giving committee) brought in 2 bags of balloons she wanted to share with the blueberries. What an interesting provocation - deflated balloons, many of them, and a pump - what should we do with so many of them? We asked the group that question - how many do you think we should give the balloons? Children offered ideas ranging from 1 to 20 - 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 20. Using unifex cubes (uniform 1inch plastic cubes that connect together) we placed value on each theory by showing each in a stack - 1 stack per set of amount proposed.
The above video is a snippet from that circle meeting - different children got to build stacks based on how many balloons were suggested. Their engagement in the process was incredible - the children paid so much attention to each stack as it was being made, helping count as the stacks got taller.
After all the ideas were made visible using the cubes, Tenley had the idea to, "Put all the numbers together." A new way of thinking about our ideas! We did just that, stacking each set on top of each other. Once that was done we needed to count those to see what the final amount was, with them added all together. With the grownups counting along, the final count was a whopping 41! William recorded the findings on the whiteboard near the rug so we could remember. The whole group gathered around to watch him write on the board - it was a beautiful display of support and curiosity from the group as they shared William's experience!
Rachael (one of our teaching parents that day) shared her thoughts about the exciting circle time meeting - I also noticed how engaged all the children were in the counting activity that would help determine how many balloons were needed for the blueberry plants. Then - it was amazing to see how interested all the children were as William wrote the final number on the whiteboard. I wondered why they were all so interested in this - they all pushed forward and tried to get as close as they could to William as he wrote the numbers - 41. Were they interested in the total number? Or were they interested in William learning how to write the numbers?
This final tally was used this week as we sorted and counted the number of balloons available, before blowing them up using Dorian's hand pump.
This week we revisited the many, many rocks the Protection Committee has gathered (all falling under the guidelines the archaeologists gave us of which we could take) by sorting them. We did this for multiple reasons -
We brought them to morning circle time on Monday where the children immediately began using various adjectives to describe the rocks - huge, big, heavy, small, tiny, rough, hot, warm, cold. Knowing we were going to be sorting them during small group time, I thought it would be interesting to have the whole group be a part of the sorting process. Temperature was a category that surprised me - the children were so in tune to many ways to be thinking about the rocks! We made three piles - hot, warm, and cold. Each child put a rock (or two) into the category they thought fit.
Breaking into small group time, Brynn was very excited to continue with the sorting. For her, the process began by building with the rocks - another way of building her understanding of the rocks and putting them in relationship with one another. She tested out the different ways the rocks could stack and fit together before sorting them into piles based on size - big and small.
She then started noticing the color of some of the rocks - she found a pink one that she seemed surprised to find!
Brynn: This one is sort of pink!
Petra: Should we make a pile of pink ones?
Brynn: Yeah...here. I'll put it on this one.
She made a pile on a piece of paper and labeled it PINK. She then found some rocks that had a lot of white on them, and we made a white category. After creating those two categories Brynn continued to build with the rocks.
Brynn: This is the door over here - the birds go inside when they get lost from their family. They fly when they find their family.
Dorian joined the table and discovered 2 new categories - BROWN and TINY. We made and labeled those as well. William and Dudley helped sort some from the basket into both the size categories and thecolor categories.
We reported the next day during circle time about the categories, and some children were inspired to create new categories - Grace wanted to have a LIGHT BROWN one and a LIGHT GRAY one. Sophia agreed and worked with the materials at the table during classroom time. The video below is of Sophia sorting the brown, gray, and pink rocks. She, Grace, Parker, and James worked together throughout the rest of the experience to create some new categories and sort more of the rocks - BLACK, SAND ROCKS, PINE CONE, and BIG & LOTS OF COLORS (incorporating size and color categories.)
Thank you for reading!
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I notice – I wonder