In the Yellow Room at St Werburgh’s Park Nursery School, children have been exploring the ideas of ‘full’ and ‘empty’ through hands-on play and thoughtful conversation. In the mud kitchen, they experimented with filling and emptying containers, noticing what happens when they add more and what they might need to do when something becomes full. Children scooped materials in and out, testing their ideas and predicting what might happen next as they worked together.
These experiences linked closely to familiar routines at snack time, where children use five frames to help them make sense of quantity. As they looked closely, they described what they could see, often noticing details such as “2 cucumbers left”. This supported their understanding of counting, comparison and how numbers relate to real objects in meaningful contexts.
The exploration continued as children considered how many jugs of water would be needed to fill a large container. They carefully carried full jugs, observing how they became empty as the water was poured out. Through this process, children developed their mathematical thinking, language skills and problem solving, while also building confidence in sharing ideas and working collaboratively with others.
