Building With Unifix Cubes

            The room is a great third teacher, and the materials available to the kids are easy to access and they are able to use them without a lot of restriction.

            They had been using the Unifix cubes to help practice their patterns. They started small but grew bigger, bigger, and bigger. During their free inquiry time their goal was to see how long they could make their patterns (or just length of cubes depending on availability). They got across the table, but that wasn’t quite enough for them. They had to find a way to make it longer. They tried building up with different materials, my favorite being them making another vertical stick of cubes and having them attempt to balance it under the horizontal beam between tables. They ended up finding out their chairs would work as a perfect rest for the cubes, and so they were growing bigger and bigger. The best thing would be to watch them realize what distance apart they could put the chairs without the sticks breaking. This was quite important because depending on what the others students were doing, chairs could be scarce, so those extra few centimeters were crucial!