In addition to the other centers that we use to encourage learning through play, the Manipulatives Center offers students a way to use not only their motor skills but their imagination to design as well. This center, sometimes called “table toys,” offers many opportunities for students to stretch themselves and build skills they will need as they grow.
Students at Genesis Preschools, through their play with table toys:
- Discover math concepts like counting, sorting, classifying, shape recognition, matching, opposites, stacking, and patterning
- Practice their social skills as they cooperate and work together
- Use their growing vocabulary to convey their imaginative ideas and plans and to ask for assistance when needed
- Engage new science skills like cause and effect, balance, gravity, magnetic properties, sense of touch, and spatial relationships
- Sharpen their fine motor skills by working with toys of different sizes
- Apply building skills, architectural theories, and problem solving skills
- Create objects and buildings as representations of real life experiences