Play as a vehicle for learning

How can play help foster the skills and understandings outlined in the Q.E.P?

Although play can be used as a content vehicle to engage learners of all ages, it is especially relevant for younger students who’s experiences involve imaginative play on a daily basis. Younger learners enjoy the act of  both doing and engaging physically with their environment as well as with others, and play effectively responds to these needs. For example, using play as a vehicle for learning allows cycle one students to actively participate in song and rhyming verses which helps form a foundation for number sense, as well as for developing skills in skip counting and subitizing. By involving numbers, and number sense in authentic experiences of play using singing and movement, and also by connecting verses with number groupings, these experiences, and the relationship they inspire early on serve as a useful foundation for mathematical reasoning, and will ultimately better facilitate number groupings such as multiplication as a later concept.

Meeting Curricular objectives:

As per the Q.E.P’s Mathematics program:

“Reasoning in mathematics consists in establishing relationships, combining them and using them to perform a variety of operations in order to create new concepts and
take one’s mathematical thinking to a higher level.”

 Competency 2: “To reason using mathematical concepts and processes”

P.O.L:

1. “Counts or recites counting rhymes involving natural numbers

a. counts forward from a given number.

b. counts forward or backward.

c. skip counts (e.g. by twos).”

From the Progression of Learning Mathematics