Big and Small

Bree and I had a little conversation about her Blunnies a while ago. She had placed hers next to her dad’s and I pointed out that her father’s work boots were big and hers were small. Later, we also compared other things around the house. Soon, it was very obvious that she knew what was big and what was small. That was a mini milestone indicating that she was ready to be introduced to my pack of Bear counters. I did not introduce the whole pack of 80 counters right away. The first game we played was sorting the bears by size. We used 5 big bears (aka Papa Bears) and 5 small bears (aka Baby Bears). To minimize distractions, the game was played using only the blue bears at first. Blue was selected because that is one colour that Bree could identify at the time. At first, she watched how I sorted the bears by sitting the big bears onto one plastic plate and then the small bears onto another plastic plate. I deliberately slowed down the process and sorted the bears one by one while Bree watched attentively. By the time I had only three small bears left, she more or less got the idea and helped to place them among the other two small bears. After that, she sorted them again over and over. In the weeks afterwards, Bree asked almost daily if I brought the bears with me. LOL.

I bought this pack of counters years ago. They have been used by many children in my care. I remember vividly when I bought them from this snobby toy shop; I was told by the shop assistant that preschoolers were too young to use these counters. Funnily, she even told me that she knew what she was talking about because she too is an ECE teacher. LOL. Pretending that I was also buying for older children, I just politely disregarded her comments and continued to purchase other items associated to the pack of counters. It is true that Bree is too young to work on many of the suggested activities but as can be seen here, she was clearly ready for the basic level work. I prefer to observe children to see what they are capable of than to simply write something off as too challenging. Like the other children before her, other activities related to these bear counters will be introduced to Bree gradually. It is very important that we always offer learning experiences that not only offer opportunities for success but we should also offer that little bit of extra challenge to stretch the child’s imagination. Imagination is probably not the right word because what it means to me is very different to what others have in mind. Does anyone have a better word?

Note: Photo of the bear counters has been removed.