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Place Scenes

Mathematical Thinking

Happy Winter Wonderful Teachers! 

Places Scenes – Building Blocks, Weeks 12- 14: Counting objects to 10; Connecting numeral to quantity; Part-part-whole; Small number addition – Now many now?)

Places Scenes is a wonderful activity for inviting children to integrate and apply all that we have taught them so far.  Start by providing children with: various “scenes,” character objects to manipulate, a tool for identifying the numbers to use (a die, spinner, number cards, etc.).

The scenes and character objects can align with your ongoing curricular thread, or with what you know about your children’s interests.  In this week’s examples we are using gingerbread people, as many teachers currently are exploring diverse gingerbread stories.

How to play:

  1. Choose a scene.
  2. Spin the spinner (“The spinner tells you how many.”), read the numeral and place that number of characters into your scene.
  3. Begin to tell your story (or wait . . .)
  4. Spin again, read the numeral and add that number of characters into your scene.
  5. Count up the total number of characters in your scene.
  6. Tell a story that speaks to the two sets and the whole group. (Teachers take dictation, and scaffold as needed)

One day, two gingerbread children were sliding down the slide.  Four more came along who also wanted to slide.  It was hard to take turns, but then they made a plan.  All six gingerbread children had fun on the slide.”

2 green gingerbread models on a playground
2 green gingerbread models and 4 brown gingerbread models in a playground
3 brown gingerbread models in a wintery forest

3 gingerbread kids were playing hide and seek in the forest.  Everyone wanted to hide.

3 brown gingerbread model and one green gingerbread model in a wintery forest

1 more came along and became the seeker.  All 4 gingerbread kids enjoyed playing until the sun went down.

Places Scenes can be simplified by only rolling once, or made more challenging by rolling more than twice. Places Scenes can also be integrated with our literacy work by:

  • Taking pictures of the completed story, adding the text, and sharing it with the class.
  • Asking children to draw and record the story they created, and then taking dictation.
  • Making a Places Scenes Class Book, where these stories live.
  • Using the dictated stories at Story Acting Story Theater.

Year-Long Trajectory

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