When you write a book, one of the interesting challenges is deciding what needs to be included and what should be omitted. It’s never an easy task. One concept that I felt I didn’t do justice to in Messy Maths, was that of rotation. Thus I thought it would be good to blog about this subject…

An interest in rotation often begins very young when a baby is mesmerised with the turning motion of objects within their sight. As children grow and develop, they enjoy spinning, turning and rotating an array of objects from dials on radios and toys to large experiences such as sitting on a roundabout in a play park. The sensation for many children in being able to spin and turn their own bodies can be a sought-after experience.

What children may be learning

Rotation lends itself to many outdoor explorations that have strong links to science and maths concepts:

• How objects and toys can be moved.
• That to spin a toy requires a push, a pull or a turn (a force)
• When I spin around, I get dizzy
• Cause and effect: when I turn a knob, something may happen, e.g. the volume of sound increases or decreases on a radio.
• Rotation is a geometric transformation. Whilst young children need not know this vocabulary, they need plenty of play experiences of rotation in order to visualise how objects can be rotated in space when they are older. It is also the foundations of rotational symmetry.

Routines

Look at routines in your setting and consider if you ensure children have opportunities to regularly:

• Turn a door knob to get outside.
• Open and close gates and doors (the rotation happens on the hinge).
• Move resources – for example, a play house may be carried across the play space and then turned to face a different direction.

Out and about

• At a play park, explore and enjoy all the equipment that spins, turns, rotates or has moving circles.
• Look for hills to roll down. Estimate then check how many times a child can rotate between two points?
• Visit a car tyre specialist and observe how the staff change tyres on a car.
• When out for a walk, look for items that spin or turn, e.g.

1. Car wheels
2. Steering wheels
3. Automatic car washers (with the big brushes)
4. Wind vanes
5. Wind turbines and windmills
6. Water wheels
7. Helicopters in the air
8. Lighthouses, police cars and ambulances – the flashing light is often caused by a rotation
9. Charity penny drops – you add money and it falls and moves and spins as it goes into the collection box

At home

Ask parents to spend time with their child finding examples of things that rotate:

• Kitchen and toilet rolls
• Screw tops on bottles
• Dials on cookers, microwaves
• Taps that turn water off and on
• Washing machines on a spin cycle
• Watching water go down a plug hole after a bath
• Using a salad spinner to dry washed lettuce
• Watching a liquidiser or food processor

Physical opportunities

• Spinning on the spot.
• Learning how to hula hoop.
• Undertake a range of position and movement activities linked to turns.
• Playing games and action songs which involve rotating, either by individual children or a group, such as moving round as a circle.
• Swinging on swings, especially rope swings which enable children to spin around as well as swing backwards and forwards.
• Learning to use a screw and screwdriver and attaching nuts and bolts. A hand drill is a practical application of rotation to create a hole.
• Spinning little and large objects such as hula hoops, spinners, balls and coins.
• Add a range of rolling pins into the sand pit so children learn how to create a flat surface through using the rolling pin.
• Dancing (thank you, Annette Parsons).

In nature

• Throw sycamore seeds into the air and watching them helicopter to the ground.
• Spin cones of different types and sizes. In nature, pine cones and eggs do have some ability to roll but spinning seems to be easier
• Look at the concentric circles on tree stumps or wooden disks. Feel the circles and the continuous nature of the circles.
• Collect conkers in autumn and rotate them to fit them back in their cases – NB supervise and wash hands after use as conkers are potentially harmful.
• Stir water in a puddle. Is it the depth of the puddle or the type of stick used that creates the best effect?
• Go and search for the perfect circular stone and learn how to spin it, just like spinning a coin.
• Enjoy wave watching on a stormy day as the white horses curl and crash onto the shore.
• Explore spirals and rotations in nature.

Construction and technology

• Provide a range of different bikes, trikes and other vehicles that rely on rotating wheels to move. Does the type of wheel affect ease of movement?
• Find examples of swivel wheels such as those on the front of buggies. These rotate in two different ways, just like shopping trolleys.
• Use wheel barrows when gardening and for transporting materials around the outdoor space.
• Have an old bike which children can explore and take apart. This involves unscrewing lots of bits and finding out about gears. A bike wheel can be used in water play as a giant water wheel.
• Have a range of tyres and cable drums for children to use and move around when playing. Go for sizes appropriate to age: go-kart tyres, motor bike tyres are generally more manoeuvrable by younger children.
• A pulley is comprised or one or more wheels which rotate. Develop pulley systems to transport baskets and other items around the outdoor space. Find out what happens when a double pulley is used compared with a single pulley. Set up two pulleys beside each other so the children can directly compare the lifting of one object compared to another. Ask the children to count and compare the number of pulls taken to lift the load up into the air.
• You can also set up pulleys at two different posts, branches or places. Thread rope between each load and up through the pulleys. Add a handle or object which allows a child to stand in the middle and pull the rope down so that both loads are lifted simultaneously. The children also enjoy the seesaw effect of pulling one load down and watching the other get lifted up. It is like a pulling-based seesaw.
• Enjoy rolling a range of balls down guttering. How can you work out the number of rotations a ball will make on its travels?
• Older children can explore how rotation is linked to shapes through drawing around moveable objects outside. Provide chalk and big objects like tyres or crates for the children to draw around. Encourage accuracy but remember this is a skill that takes time to develop. Talk about the size of the objects and how much space they take up on the ground. For younger children, this can be done more easily outdoors in the sand or gravel areas using a stick or their finger.
• If a child chalks the outline of a milk crate, she can see how many different ways the crate will fit into the outline without turning it over. A circle or the circular face of a cylinder (e.g. a bore pipe) will have infinite ways of fitting into its outline.

Expressive arts

• Hang spiral mobiles that spin around – children can make these from paper and decorate them.
• Hang CDs outside in ways which enable children to spin them and look at the rainbows being made.
• Make paper windmills that spin in the wind.
• Use a salad spinner with water and see the pattern that emerges when it is spun over asphalt on a dry day.
• Introduce a pendulum – hang a washing up bottle filled with water upside down and swing from a tripod or from a rope placed high up. Look at the patterns made by the rotating water
• Become a human pendulum. Swing water around when spinning and see what pattern is made on dry ground.
• Put a drop of water onto a “lazy susan” then spin it to see how the paint moves when rotated.
• Using ribbons on sticks and streamers to swing around and create circles
• If there is a local person who has a spinning wheel, then it is worthwhile inviting them to demonstrate how this works, so that children can see wool being spun from fleece. Don’t forget to read the fairy tale, Rumplestiltskin.
• Collect bottle tops, smooth pebbles and other small objects with curved sides that will roll. This is useful for conversation about things that can roll and why.

Messy Maths was published many years ago. Many thanks to everyone who has been kind enough to purchase a copy. I’m also delighted that it won the Benjamin Franklin Award in the Education Book category and was also a finalist in the Education Resource Awards and a finalist in the Forward Indies Book Award. It has also won one gold and two silver awards at the 2019 Nursery World Awards.

This blog post was originally published in July 2018.