We notice that lately much of the children’s indoor and outdoor free play follows a Minecraft theme. From building with foam bricks and digging for redstone to crafting armour and fleeing from creepers, our students’ pretend play is very imaginative!
To link the children’s interest in Minecraft with our investigation of shapes, we recently made cootie catchers. (Remember from our youth, “pick a number, pick another number, pick a colour ...”) We had to start by transforming our rectangular paper into a perfect square. Our students remembered that un carré can be composed of deux triangles, so we folded a corner across and cut off the bottom strip to create a square. Next, we folded the square lengthwise both ways to make les rectangles. Finally, we folded all the corners into the centre, forming les triangles. The children really enjoyed playing with their creations and joking about getting “lost in the nether” or “pushed off a cliff by a cow!”
This activity was a great opportunity to practice:
• shape names and French vocabulary;
• following a procedure;
• concentration and precision;
• fine motor control and scissor skills.
Bonne fin de semaine !