Thursday 8 June 2017

Dice - what a great addition!

The thing I love the most about my job is that you just never know what a day will bring bring, preschoolers are rarely predictable in their behaviour and the same goes for the way they look at the world or use resources.
I had always admired the wonderful collection of dice that I saw in use over on Takoma Park Cooperative Nursery School's Facebook page but had never got around to getting enough for us to use. So this year when we had our Easter Egg  Hunt fundraiser I decided to use some of the funds to buy lots and lots of dice. I ordered coloured ones and then as a after through added an order for a job lot of red ones too. When they arrived I was delighted to discover that the red dice were much bigger than I had expected and they have proved such a great combination with so many different resources, in just a week the children have had fun adding them to the Polydron and then over the past two days they have proved a real asset with the Tree Blocks. 
The little dice and the Polydron
I watched as 4 children spent over an hour building houses using the dice and blocks and adding to them as they went along. 
One group built their house and then added some small green dice to the roof - "It' a caterpillar" they told me.
Can you see the green 'caterpillar' on the roof?
Another child added tables and chairs for his 'people' (the bigger red dice) and then used the smaller dice as their pizzas! (perhaps inspired by Dominos?!)
Another built a tower and enjoyed counting how many dice they could build up with until it would fall. 

My next plan is to add the dice and poker chips to the Polydron - I'll let you know how they get on!

(I purchased these dice from Hope Education)