Open Ended Materials

Intentionally leaving open ended materials for students at centres, allows children to be creative and participate in tasks from their own individual developmental and academic level. At our math centre, we intentionally left shapes out to see what some students would do with them. Some students sorted them, some made a pattern and other students made a design. Here's just one example that we saw demonstrated:

Creating open ended tasks, that support more than one "correct" answer allows students to be creative, take risks, increase confidence and build on previous learning. There are all very important skills to develop in kindergarten.