Making a Block Sandwich with Kindergartners (Early Math Collaborative)

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Thinking about sandwiches cut in half leads this boy to explore shape composition and equivalence with blocks. The teacher pushes his thinking by joining in the play and ordering a whole sandwich of the same size. Block play in kindergarten can be full of math.
FOUNDATIONAL MATH TOPIC: SHAPE
Everything in the material world has shape. In mathematics, the focus is very much on regular shapes, such as the two-dimensional circle, triangle, and rectangle and the three-dimensional solids known as spheres and polyhedrons. In our everyday world, these solids commonly appear in objects we describe as boxes, pyramids, blocks, cylinders, and balls. A deeper knowledge about how two- and three-dimensional shapes are defined and relate to one another will help educators be aware of subtle distinctions and rules. Such an understanding allows educators to notice and highlight children’s key discoveries and to guide their experiences to make this knowledge explicit for them.
© Erikson Institute’s Early Math Collaborative. Reprinted from Big Ideas of Early Mathematics: What Teachers of Young Children Need to Know (2014), Pearson Education.