Heuristic Play!! What????

HEURISTIC  PLAY, What a mouthful! This ‘play’ is about giving children everyday items and allowing them to discover the properties.

How does it feel? Sound? Smell? Taste? Under 2’s are still very much in ‘discovery’ play mode. They are working out how the world works by using their ‘exploring and discovering’ skills. To help them further discover these skills offer a ‘treasure basket’ full of wonder!!!

Did you know that babies tongues are one of their best sense. This sense become less sensitive as our other senses take over but this is why babies put everything in their mouths.

How to make a Heuristic Play Basket:

Step 1: Find a natural basket! (I am  a little bit addicted to baskets). But it can be a box but remember we can stimulate the sense of touch by adding natural materials. We also dont want to add a brightly coloured box because we want the wonder to be of other senses not just ‘what you see’.

Step 2: Gather everyday items from around the house or garden. (I have added some foil into an orange bag, great to ‘scrunch’)

Step 3: Put them into the basket.

Now that you have all seen how hard it is to create a ‘Heuristic Play basket’, you can make them for your friends and use the ‘fancy words’ to impress! 😉

I would love to hear what you have as natural play baskets. I am sure you have all been doing this and didn’t realise you are offering ‘Heuristic Play’ to your little ones.

:)Kara

Count the stars! Numeracy skills!

“Look at the stars Mummy, there must be 89 of them” (89 is the favourite number at the moment, everything must be 89, even poor Nanny).

“Hmmm I wonder how many there are?”

“I know, lets count them” (Great idea Miss 4)

So off she went, Miss 4 got to 46 without any help and then made it to 100 with a few reminders. I was very pleasantly surprised!! It made me think, how has she learnt to do this? I do alot with my children but I don’t sit down and make them learn; there are no structured  ‘learning sessions’ in my household.

However……What we do is talk naturally about numeracy as part of our life. For example,

1. Miss 4 is my speed limit spotter!!

She is able to read most speed signs and loves to tell me “Mummy now its 60”!!!

2. We talk about what is more, bigger, less, equal.

3. We also use our fingers, toes to get us to numbers higher then 10 and then use them to do simple addition and subtractions.

4. We talk about money and I let them play with coins (under my supervision), what the shapes are, what the value of each coin is and how to add money. Money is great to look at when you have a play shop.

There are a 1001 different ways you could add ‘numeracy’ into your life. Everything we do can in our day to day life relate back to skills that can be used for numeracy literacy.

What do you do to help encourage numeracy skills with your children?