Learning Science, Math and Technology with Childrens Engagement in Play - Essay Example

Learning Science, Math and Technology with Children’s Engagement in Play Play has been found by experts to be an effective tool in learning. While children play, they become fully engaged in the activity that their sensorial awareness is heightened in full gear. Little do they know that they are learning much from their play experience and the skills they develop are applied in their everyday tasks without even being aware that they have gained such skills already. This workshop will discuss the free play of children from infancy to early childhood and each stage will be represented by a particular type of play that is common to children their age. It will be learned that Science, Math and Technology concepts and skills are acquired while children engage in play. Math and Science are all around. Children usually see numbers on television channels, telephones, their house numbers, on tag prices, etc. They may also witness their mothers in the kitchen as they cook following recipes that specify the measured ingredients. Science is likewise ever-present as they discover how things work, observe change in things, use their senses in learning about their world. Technology is likewise accessible to them. This is not limited to what most adults know about technology as electronic gadgets or computerized contraptions. Technology includes processes people use to solve a problem deliberately. Adults should respect how young children want to try their hand in working with technology (Mortlock, 2005). It is for the children to discover how technology will work for them and make tasks more convenient such as using cups or buckets in the sandbox to create more defined mounds of sand instead of just a hump they shape out of their hands. The following will discuss how science, math and technology interplay in the messy play of infants, sand play of toddlers and block play of pre-schoolers. These activities come naturally for children that they do not need any specific instructions from adults. Messy But Busy Babies” In the Stages of Cognitive Development of Piaget, children from 0 – 2 years of age belong to the Sensorimotor Stage. This period is characterized by interactions with the environment based on the child’s reception of sensory input and muscular reactions. The task of this period is to develop the concept of object permanence, the idea that objects exist even when they cannot be seen or heard. (Brewer, 2001). Infants are sensorial learners and they are awed by the possibilities of the objects around them. When they engage in messy play, they get to touch things and feel its textures, see the object up close so details may be inspected. They even get to smell or in most cases, taste objects because it is in their nature to learn about things by putting it in their mouths. Science is at work when they notice changes in things, such as when a drop of paint blots on the paper when an object passes on it. They also get to notice tracks or prints of objects such as car wheels or rollers when these make impressions with paint on paper. They learn math when they see the colors and shapes of the toys they play with and get to feel the dimensions of shapes when they touch these with their hands. They would know that circles have no angles and that squares have 4 sides. When they are handed things like sponges or small rubber stamps for printing, they realize that these may serve as technology to leave imprints when dipped in paint. Allowed to explore paints and things during messy play gives them several learning opportunities about how things work in the world and what they can do with these things to cause an effect such as rolling a plastic care over paint and seeing the tracks they can make from it. Curious Tykes in the Sandbox Toddlers continue to enjoy sensorial play and they love playing with open-ended materials such as sand and water. They learn many scientific concepts with sand. Pouring various amounts of water on sand creates different textures and this dictates how firm the sand will mold into the shapes they want. Too little water will make the sand crumbly when it is released from the mold. Too much water will make it runny that they cannot form it into anything. They also learn math concepts in sand play such as comparing buckets of sand as to which bucket has more sand than the other, or which size of bucket gets filled up with a certain number of scoops of sand. They would learn that bigger buckets take a longer time to fill up with more scoops of sand. With regards to technology, toddlers can discover that use of various objects with sand play may create different effects on the sand. When they use rakes or combs, it leaves lines when they run these through sand. They can also create different sand impressions with different objects of various shapes. Exploring Blocks in Preschool Blocks are staple preschool materials that provide a multitude of benefits to children. The natural feel of wood, its smoothened shapes teach three-dimensional geometric shapes that feed young children with knowledge in basic mathematical concepts. Since blocks come in sets, children are able to explore numeracy by counting sets of blocks shapes and matching complementary shapes that may teach about parts and wholes. Children get to know about how many triangles can make a square or rectangle or how many cylinders they should use to reach a certain height. Napper (1991) contends that early play with blocks does not necessarily include building structures but learning about the attributes of the blocks such as its size, shape, mass and texture. These attributes will then build simple to complex structures and help them solve block building problems that are associated with design, bridging, enclosures and repetition. When children build structures, they realize that they need to balance it well. This is where scientific thinking comes in, as they experiment with which shapes and number of those shapes should be used so as not to topple down the structure. Simple physics is reflected when they study the angles that would project movement and direction. The basic “machines” of inclined plane and wedge may be utilized as tools to help them in building. These may also be part of what they learn from technology. Apart from using the blocks, children may search for other technology to use to bolster or embellish their structures such as pulleys and wheels. Adding accessories like cars or traffic signs give more meaning to their block play. With the right disposition and trust that children’s explorations will bring about meaningful learning for them, adults can let go of their young learners and let them loose in the world of play. Usually, it follows that Science, Math and Technology are incorporated in their play and they unconsciously learn concepts and skills in these areas which would greatly benefit them as they grow up. Engaging in play especially with materials that do not have specific purposes or have a multitude of uses expands children’s imaginations and therefore involves their higher thinking processes. Giving them a toy that has a mechanical function such as a wind-up toy or a push-button toy that automatically does its movement or music leaves little for the children to work on because the goal of the toy is to merely entertain children who just passively watch it. On the other hand, open-ended toys such as blocks, paints, playdough, sand, etc. can be challenging for them to discover its possibilities. Learning comes with discovery, and sometimes, the learning they derive from their play are concepts and skills that they may lean on when they are older and are being formally taught lessons on such concepts and skills. It is essential that seeds of learning various concepts and skills have already been planted in them during their play in their early childhood. Thus, they have something to harvest when the right time comes. References Brewer, J. (2001) Introduction to early childhood education. Allyn & Bacon. Mortlock, A. (2005) The technologist-toddler and ‘intentionality’, The First Years: Ngo Tau Tuatahi. New Zealand Journal of Infant and Toddler Education, Vol. 7, Issue 2. Napper, I. (1991) The Development of Technological Capability in Young Children, Australian Journal of Early Childhood, Vol. 16 (3). Read More