When Froebel, the inventor of the Kindergarten [1] designed the “Gifts” and “Occupations” given to the children,
he deliberately selected materials that provided a haptic dimension to their explorations. This physicality in the
interaction with the gifts can create a significant potential learning focus making full use of concepts of spatial
reasoning (front-back, over-under, etc.). For adults playing with the materials for the first time, and incorporating a
reflective component in their doing and their thinking, the Gifts can provide a novel perspective on other, deeper
mathematical concepts. The following paper and its accompanying workshop present some activities possible with
Gift # 14, which involves the Occupation of paper weaving, and explore ideas in modular arithmetic, combinatorial
geometry, ethnomathematics and more.