Thursday 19 September 2013

Beans Play

I am so in love with our current play set-up that I've decided to dedicate this entry to it. I had bought a set of Geometric Solids about a month or two ago but on their own, the little girl had shown little interest in them. So when inspiration came, I decided to throw some beans, geometric solids and a detergent scoop in a glass casserole, put them on the light box, and let her do the rest. When she woke up and saw the set-up, only hunger stopped her from playing, but play resumed after breakfast.

Beans play before breakfast

Each geometric solid has one removable face, which is the base for many of them and the removable face also has a little circular opening which you can plug. So when she realised that the solids can be filled, she immediately went on with the scooping of the beans to fill the containers.

Totally absorbed with the activity

After a while, she decided that it was also fun to pick the beans with her fingers and drop them through the little opening one by one. That was some good fine motor skills practice that she had and I admired her concentration as she picked and dropped the beans one at a time. Wouldn't be faster to just use the scoop? But that's just me, thinking with my adult, always-trying-to-accomplish-things-quickly mind. Children have a totally different agenda.

Picking and dropping the beans one at a time

Once the geometric solids were filled, or partially filled, she wanted to shake them as rattles. I would have done the same! I really enjoyed the plink plonk of the beans as they dropped on the glass, plastic and wooden surfaces, and I bet she enjoyed it too. The only problem is, the removable face and plastic plug for the little opening come off pretty easily, but nothing some Scotch tape couldn't fix. Once taped, she had her bean rattles to make some music.

The removable face and little opening for the cube

Left to her own devices, she went on to transferring the beans from one filled solid to another. Since their volumes are not the same, I jumped at the opportunity to talk about volume, space, more than and less than. After all, these fillable, see-through solids are meant for students to explore the properties of volume. I tried to use the correct names for the solids too, like sphere, cube and cone, but she was happy to call them square, circle and triangle instead.

Beans play resumed after breakfast

So that was in the morning, but at night, she turned on the light table and continued playing with her papa. Of course her papa was intrigued with the geometric solids too and did his own exploration. There's a child in all of us, isn't it? And I was glad I didn't clear the set-up that night. The next day, she took out the solids that I had kept in their box, turned on the light box, took her friend Hello Kitty with her, and resumed playing.

More scooping the next day

She remembered what I had done with the tape so after filling them with beans, she asked for the tape and scissors and asked me to tape them. And because the previous night she had seen her papa looking at the instruction manual to look at suggested activities, names of the solids and formulas, she did the same too. Sometimes she really imitates us to a T.

Learning the formulas?

For patiently and quietly sitting beside her, Hello Kitty was rewarded with her own cubic bean rattle. How lucky! She held it onto Hello Kitty's hand and shook it to rattle the beans. Hmmm... she definitely needs a real playmate at home. 

Hello Kitty and her cubic beans rattle

It's been two days of beans play and it doesn't look like she's tired of it yet. The last time she played with the same set-up for days was when I threw in some plastic beads and water, with some scoops and transparent containers and bottles, at her water table. She spent days scooping, filling and transferring. 

As a future activity, I am planning to throw the geometric solids with some water, plastic beads and scoops at her water table. The transparency of the solids allows her to see the beads swirling around before they settle down. And I would use the opportunity to tell her that water has no definite shape and takes the shape of its container. Updates to come after I have done that activity!

I had wanted to link this post to the the site on Amazon where I had bought the Geometric Solids, but it's currently not available. I had just seen them listed on Amazon yesterday! Oh well, there are others which are similar such as Power Solids which are cheaper but they don't come with plugs for the openings. The other one is Relational Geosolids which have the same function as Geometric Solids but it's not multi-coloured. And if you are getting these as a teaching aid in school, then the Giant Geosolids would suit the purpose.

Update:
As of 30th Sep, the Geometric Solids are on sale at Amazon again!

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