With lots of educational plastic toys available in the market targeting maths skills, Liz Gibbs and NISC EL teachers agrees that the use of natural materials in their teaching has notable benefits. In Liz’s maths model lessons to EL2 and EL3 children, she used natural materials such as rocks, stones and shells. The children took turns taking up to three of these natural materials and had a few go at jiggling them around and then counting again to see that the three is still there. Some children put a rock on top of each shell, which unbeknownst to them, they are showing their beginning knowledge of one-to-one correspondence.
These natural materials engaged multiple senses—sight, touch, and sometimes even sound. The sensory experience helped reinforce learning and made mathematical concepts more concrete, understandable and meaningful.
Meanwhile, in Liz’s model lesson to EL4 children, she used a parachute in her number sense instruction. Bean bags of various colours and dominoes where placed under the parachute and children were called out to pick a domino and show their counting skills as they counted the dots on their dominoes. This was extended to finding out who got the most number of dots on their dominoes. Bean bags were used for colour recognition and identification and an extension of counting how many got the same colour bean bags was also incorporated. This parachute game was an engaging and effective way to combine physical activity with mathematical concepts.
