Discovering a village through games

Abstract

The didactic experience presented in this article was carried out in a kindergarten in the Canton of Ticino, approaching different learning contexts, of which the most relevant are the study of the environment and the mathematical area. The path is focused on games, in particular old-time games, introduced through several phases of research, work and sharing. The paper highlights the mathematical (and other) skills developed by the children thanks to the discovery, reproduction and analysis of the games. The path also activated skills related to understanding and producing descriptive and regulatory texts, enriched and supported by sequences of images. To understand and explain their logical functioning, the children described the games played, and invented new ones, creating the rules in iconic and written form.
The didactic experience enabled a dynamic transition from the game played to the sharing and drafting of the rules and vice versa from the instructions to the realisation of the game.