A thinking game...

Last week the children enjoyed the opportunity to work with wool and create their own patterns and shapes. They were excited to give it a go. Some children stayed briefly while others stayed a long time and tested lots of ideas. 

For some children the concept was very tricky. It was challenging to be able to hold the wool, apply the right pressure as you moved the wool and to hold the shape they were creating. This experience allowed children opportunities to explore and experiment, to test their theories, to gain knowledge and to engage with new mediums. 

As children worked with the wool, they developed their fine motor skills. Manipulating the wool around their fingers and around the nails to create patterns and shapes. For some children it was a very tricky concept and they looked to their more capable peers to gain knowledge and ideas to help them gain ideas and techniques for success.

"Childhood is a time of increasing independence. As children grow and develop they become more able to do things for themselves and to explore their world independently. (Touhill, 2013).

As children work with the wool they learn many concepts:

Exploring maths concepts (Shapes, fractions, patterns)

Practicing and promoting fine motor skills 

Developing spatial awareness

Creativity

Exploring symmetry

Exploring concepts such as up, down, around, top, bottom

Allowing children the opportunity to be creative and bring their ideas to the experience is important too. Children "demonstrate incredible control of the process of composing through dialoguing with the materials of art. Meaning-making through visual narrative is a highly creative and fluid process, where children become authors using multiple texts" (Wright, 2014).

As the children worked, they discussed their work with each other...

"I'm doing a big wall thing like this. Look at my one. Its cool. Do you see what I'm meaning?" Myllah

"Make a circle. Like this. I wrap it all around here and back down here"  Zoey M

"This is so tricky this triangle" Poppy

"Circles, circles mean circles. Its a round shape" Addison

 "The Te Whariki perspective is that children will participate in the symbol systems and tools of mathematics for personal, social, and cultural purposes: for becoming confident and competent" (MOE Kei-Tua-o-te-Pae 18, 2008).