Post 2: Learning by playing

You have probably heard several times about gamification, which is known as the use of techniques, elements and dynamics characteristic of games in non-game contexts, in our case, at school, in order to enhance motivation, as well as to reinforce behaviour to solve a problem, improve productivity, obtain an objective, activate learning and evaluate specific individuals, among others.

Games are a very good alternative for teaching and working on any content, especially with primary school pupils, in such a way that by attracting their attention and capturing their interest, they will learn more and better as they will be more attentive and concentrated, learning by enjoying is the best way for the content to be "engraved" in our minds.

There are numerous games and manipulative resources that exist, as for example the "Tangram", a very old Chinese game, which consists of forming silhouettes of figures with the seven given pieces without overlapping them.

The 7 pieces, called "Tans", are: 

5 triangles, two built with the main diagonal of the same size, the two small ones in the central strip are also of the same size and one of medium size located in a corner.

1 square

1 parallelogram or rhomboid

An interesting fact about this game is that all the figures that can be formed with the pieces have the same area but not the same perimeter.

But, apart from these useful materials, it is a fact that nowadays the world evolves with technology, which is a fundamental part of our daily lives, so we must also look for digital and technological resources, online games, websites, video games, etc., that we can use with our students, both in class and at home. 

For example, this page Mundo Primaria is very good to work on geometry in a playful and online way, we can select the specific course we are focusing on and thus find activities and exercises according to the level of our children and also, once we have selected the course, we can also select the specific content we want to work on, polygons, straight lines, diameter and radius..., and play some educational games according to the course, level and contents that we have selected.

Another resource that we can use to work on geometry with children is the Geoclic Website, where we have interactive activities with which we can work on the contents while we explain the theory and use these exercises to give examples so that the pupils can see and check for themselves what has been explained.