Playing With Mathematics and Finding “REAL” Treasure

Joy and success is written all over the faces of our Pre-Primary and Kindy children as they enter the school gate after a long walk in search of “real” treasure. The class have returned from their first experiencing of Geocaching. If you have not yet heard of Geocaching, it is a treasure hunt using GPS to find a geocache/ treasure, near your home and in our instance near our school.

Children at Hensman Street Elementary are fortunate to explore their surrounding community in many different ways, for many different purposes. Their natural curiosity and thirst to learn inspires educators to create learning opportunities for children to explore, discover and learn in realistic and integrated ways.

As the Kindy and Pre-Primary children have shown great interest in mapping this year. Teachers have used this interest to create various learning experiences that allow children to play with mapping whilst learning curriculum outcomes such as: Mathematics; describing position and movement; describing familiar two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional shapes in the environment.

As they experienced success, their bodies were filled with positive brain hormones and of course they want to do it again.

So, we have empowered our children to be “Hensman Hero’s” and to spread the word about the authentic, rich learning that we provide at our school. In future Geocaching experiences children will add our “Hensman Hero Keyring” into the treasure box for the next treasure hunter to find.

Spread the word, there is treasure to be found, mathematics skills to be learned and healthy brain development to be enjoyed.