Kindergarten Readiness

To continue from yesterday’s blogpost on all the learning and creativity that happens as children play in a sandbox, here is another kindergarten readiness activity. When kids play in the sand, besides digging, scooping and pouring they are also measuring. A pail needs lots of scoops to fill it up. It holds more sand than just a  scoopful. Some containers need more scoops than others. They hold more, too. Exploring with sand is readiness for kindergarten fun.

Have you ever scooped out left-overs into a container, only to discover that your container is too small? Or poured what looks likes lots of coffee into mugs only to see that the last cup has barely enough to cover the bottom? That’s the concept of volume.

Figuring out volume, that is how much something can hold,  is much more challenging than figuring out long/short or wide/narrow. This is a concept that kids work on at school long past primary grades (and is even tricky for adults). But it starts with babies discovering that spaces can be filled and grows as toddlers experiment with the concept that some containers hold more than others. Lots of play and discovery now before children go to kindergarten makes learning about volume much easier to grasp. Okay, who was drinking my tea? This cup used to half-full and now it’s half-empty!

With the weather warm enough for some outside fun, but not yet hot enough for the backyard toddler pool, playing in the sandbox seems like a good alternative. There are many kindergarten readiness skills that kids can learn and practice in the sandbox. (Once kids have learned not to eat the sand, that is!)

I’m not sure why digging in sand, scooping it up, filling a pail and then dumping it out is so appealing to kids but they do it over and over. There’s lots of science learning taking place. Kids are learning to observe what happens and to make predictions about what will happen next. For instance, they see that when poured the sand makes a cone shape. Like water, dry sand does not keep the shape of the container, but flows out. They check how high they can pile the sand before it flops over. A little bit of water changes how sand behaves, creating all kinds of questions and figuring out. Observing, predicting and questioning are powerful strategies for all kinds of learning.

Do you remember the book All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten? To quote Robert Fulghum: Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile….”  What else can kids learn when playing in the sand?