Play can be work too

In the UK there is a bottled water company called who are a non-profit making organization. The surplus generated by their sales of bottled water go to sink wells in rural sub-Saharan Africa. But sinking a well to access clean water is only half of the problem. The inhabitants of rural Africa are poor and they cannot afford to buy the fuel to power the pumps that are needed to raise the water from the well. How is the water to be pumped out of the well. This inventive company has solved this problem in a novel way. They have given each community where they have sunk a well a children’s playground roundabout. The children sit on the roundabout and push it into motion with their feet, as children do throughout the world wherever one of these things are found. But in this case the roundabout is not just a roundabout, it is also a water pump. As the children play, swinging round on the play apparatus, they also raise water from the well. It’s what can truly be called a win-win situation. We at Puppet Maths are inspired by this example of lateral thinking. We want children to succeed at maths. How better to get children to practice their maths than to make it into a game that they are eager to play? This is our purpose, to make maths fun, to make children want to do maths, and so practice their maths, and so become good at it.