Mathematics and critical thinking

Sometimes getting past numbers and counting is difficult and some practitioners are not confident in going in depth with mathematical and scientific concepts.

Tonights early years seminar at the university of Greenwich was an interesting concept which involved mathematics, creative thinking and food!
The task was to make a caterpillar using the items on the table and as you can see from the pictures we are an uniquely creative group!



The activity showed how individual perspectives can influence end products as well as how to approach the task.

Interesting enough I have recently been looking at the Nrich mathematics project from Cambridge, for ideas we could implement in the nursery.





It reminded me of a shape activity that we did at the nursery based on a Nrich activity where each person was given a loop of string, paper pens, cello tape and elastic bands. They were asked to think of a shape based activity using some or all of the items and to report back to the group. We had 2d, 3d shapes, outlines, shapes within shapes.....








Sometimes it helps to not having a set plan and specific outcome.