Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

If you have been following our blog for a while you may have noticed we have a table top with an edge which we like to use for a variety of activities such as imaginary play, science activities, art and so on.

We pulled it out this week for finger painting – wall paper paste and food colouring mixed together.

We tend to put out the primary colours when we do this sort of activity as it is another opportunity for the children to experiment with colour mixing.

Some children really get stuck into it and end up with it all up their arms …

They love it!!!

Using a variety of implements …

they made all sorts of patterns in the paint …

including writing their favourite words – their names.

As some children don’t like getting mucky, we wanted to give them a similar experience without having to get their hands dirty …

so we put some finger paint into snap lock bags and taped the openings closed.

Then, just in case the children were a bit exuberant, and the bags popped …

we put them into trays to catch any spills.

By putting two different coloured paints into the bags …

the children could still experience their colour mixing …

mess free!

This is a wonderful way the children can still experiencing the joy of pattern making and that wonderful squishy feeling.

So sensual …

so cool to the touch …

and so much fun!

We have assorted umbrellas which we use in different areas around our kindergarten.

Laying on its side on the platform this canvas umbrella …

makes an ideal quiet spot.

While we like to use this umbrella inside to add irresistible colour to the room, and we are able to hang things off it as added decoration if we so choose. That’s not to say we never use it in the great outdoors as well … ‘cos we do!

This beautiful earthy, timber, outdoor umbrella frame was a curbside find during a hard rubbish collection (and yes we did ask the owners for permission before we took it away!). All that was wrong with it was the canvas cover had gone a little mouldy, so we took the cover off and now it is a real feature at kinder and we use it all year round, sometimes outside, sometimes in …we just love it! See our Disco C.D. post on November 9th 2009, to see how we jazzed it up in the hush garden.

Sometimes we drape fabric or netting over it and sometimes we leave in natural, in time something always end up hanging off it, even if it is just a friendly snake or two!

Here we’ve hung an old umbrella upside down with the nylon cover removed to display things the children have threaded.

This is an old golf umbrella some body left at kinder years ago, so we have put it to good use as a prop. It has a straight handle so we can pop it straight into the umbrella stand or, as we have here, cushion it inside a terracotta pipe for stability.

This mini umbrella came with an insulated wine cooler and made its way to kinder. (The umbrella … not the wine cooler!) It is the perfect size to use in imaginary play and is particularly cute in our sand trays or as seen here in our bush box.

Like many kindergartens and schools …

we have a supply of the old faithful indoor building blocks.

The children still use them nearly every day, but a couple of years ago we wanted to jazz up the block scene a bit and get in some new ones.

We didn’t want more of the same old thing, so managed to find these magnificent blocks through a company called ‘Mahkupu’ ( who we believe have since changed their name to ‘Block Play’).

Due to a very supportive committee we were able to purchase the full set of ‘plantation timber’ blocks which included a huge variety of wonderfully shaped blocks which mix and match beautifully with each other …

as well as a set of people and animals, and a castle set.

We also designed the shelving unit and were able to get one of our cabinet maker dads to build it to our specifications …

so the children can have access to them at any time.

Not a day goes by that they aren’t taken out to play ..

The shapes, designs and beautiful natural coloured timber makes the look and feel of the blocks irresistible to the children.

It is a bit hard to see what this started out as, but what wonderful team work and imagination was used to get it to this!

Pardon the pun’ but children are attracted to magnets!

Another great use of our segmented picture frame is using it with interesting, magnetic and non-magnetic objects. We set it up in an area for one person to experiment with, to determine which items had magnetic attraction and which ones didn’t. However as often happens in children’s play, more than one child was interesting in having a go…

… resulting in us having to dive into the cupboard to bring out more supplies of magnets, while the children scouted around to find various objects they wanted to put on the trays.

We had magnets inside and out, on floors and tables and they kept the children interested for ages as they experimented, discovered and played co-operatively together.

One child discovered just how powerful  magnets can be.

Naturally every one else wanted to perform magic tricks too!

When we ran out of trays we put out a couple old shirt boxes with pins, and magnetic discs inside and showed the children how they could make the contents move around by running the magnets underneath or across the clear top of the box – more magic.

Of course we didn’t think to stick the lids down …

and soon they were off and all the contents mixed up which made for a new activity … sorting the pins from the discs, and what a wonderful fine motor activity that one proved to be!

When we started discussing fossils last week, what they are, how they are found and who does the finding, the children loved the thought of being a paleontologist. So we thought, “OK, let’s give it a go!!”

After reading the story ‘Amanda’s Dinosaur’ by Wendy Orr we thought it would be fun for the children to create their own fossilized eggs.

We supplied balls of tacky clay  …

along with a variety of mini dinos, shells, stones and other small articles of interest.

The children buried their selected item deep into the middle of the clay…

and molded it into an egg shapes.

To make them more rock-like, we popped the finished balls out on the window ledge in the sun to dry out.

The next day, armed with hammers, large nails and brushes, we explained to the children how carefully the fossils needed to be uncovered to prevent them being destroyed …

then they chipped …

ever so carefully …

and brushed away …

still so carefully until …

they discovered …

their fossils!!

Most children chose to chip all the clay away …

and clean up their fossil …

while a few preferred to leave a little of the clay behind …

like the fossils they’d seen pictures of in our science books!

Of course we expected some children would be a little enthusiastic, causing their fossils to be damaged or destroyed, however, to the great delight of all of us, our budding paleontologists did such a careful job that 100% of fossils were successfully uncovered with out any damage!

And of course the fun didn’t end with the discovery of the fossils …

there was still plenty of fun to be had with the left over clay …

pounding it into dust!

What excitement … and so much FUN!

Many children at this early stage of the year still love to paint their hands and swirl them all over the easel paper. Such a wonderful sensory experience!

An added bonus of this is that they create wonderful mixes of colour and enjoy telling us what they have made.

As some children don’t enjoy getting paint all over their hands we thought that they could have a colour mixing experience which wasn’t so messy.

We mixed together primary coloured paints with glue and put them into bowls with little spoons.

The children popped little dobs of the gluey paint onto waxed paper, placed another sheet on top …

then spread the colours around with their hands.

The result was varied and interesting.

When they had dried out, the children cut around their shapes …

and we put them on the window …

so the light would shine through like stained glass.

One child said that they looked like stegosaurus spines.

We like to have plenty of imaginative and sensory play areas for the children and this week we combined the two.

By tipping buckets of sand into last weeks water play, we created a dinosaur swamp using some mini dinosaur skeletons and a few large rocks.

The children had a very messy but delightful time burying and digging up the dinos.

They said it was a bit like being a pirate finding hidden treasure.

Water and sand went everywhere and we realised that placing the tub next to the board displaying our treasure maps …

wasn’t a smart idea!! … splish, splosh, splash!

This naturally led onto a discussion about archeology and fossils, so the next step was for the children to create their own fossils.

They used a variety of objects …

like shells, bones, coral and plastic dinosaurs.

They pressed them into clay …

leaving nice deep imprints …

then we mixed up the plaster and scooped it on top.

By the end of the session the plaster was dry enough to be taken off.

Uncovering the fossils was very exciting!

and ta-raa their very own ‘fossils’ to take home!

In the words of our friend Aiden to his Mum at the end of kinder today …

“Hey look what we found today … dinosaur fossils”

We are playing a few different memory games with the children, in small and large groups.

We thought a great large group game would be the one where items are placed on a tray and covered.

One or two things are removed without the children looking (yeah, right!) and they tell us what has gone.

A pirate-themed one seemed obvious to us and amongst other things we had a mini pirate hat, like the children made with the newspaper.

Some children thought it was a sail boat so we all decided it would be great to see if we could make and float them.

We have to admit it wasn’t a great success – the boats just sogged up and sank. (Cover paper works a lot better).

It could perhaps be because we used a cut up street directory and the paper was way too thin.

Needless to say, the children gathered up other other floating objects from around the kinder …

as well as objects that didn’t float …

and had a heap of fun in the water, so all was not lost!

We chatted to the children about how the melway paper boats didn’t work and what we could use another time.

One bright spark came up with the idea of using corks to make boats, so that will become our next project.

Little pots of small interesting goodies such as beads, buttons, stones, corks etc…

… are just waiting to be popped onto the measuring scales to have their weights checked and compared.

We find adding the tweezers not only makes it more fun, but adds to the fine motor skill needed to accomplish the task.

The doll at the back in the chair is a prop to make the activity look more enticing, but of course, will probably become part of the play!

And there she goes!

Donna then brought along an old photo frame from home which has various compartments for different sized photos.

She took out the photos and glass and popped different coloured paper into each space with another selection of small bits and pieces.

Once again lots of wonderful fine motor activity …

and sorting took place.

More great play based learning!

One of our boys bounced into kinder and told everyone that he was going on a holiday to “Pirate Bay”, which got the whole group talking about pirates and what they do.

The children decided they wanted to make pirate hats. Fortunately we have plenty of newspaper available, so we set up a table.

We showed the children how to fold an old favourite, simple style, triangular pirate hat …

and off they went.

They managed extremely well to follow the instructions and we were very impressed!

They folded, stuck and decorated their hats.

They did a wonderful job and they looked fantastic!

Pirates of course hunt for treasure, so many of the children went off and made their own maps.

This was very exciting!

One child even made the “X to mark the spot”!

Then they headed outside armed with their maps.

They hid treasure!

They searched for treasure  …

and they dug for treasure!

Large groups of children spent the whole morning in the sandpit digging up a large assortment of treasures.

Uncovering all sorts of things from cars, boats and spades to old shells and stones. Some children even uncovered what must have been … dinosaur bones!

While others preferred to collected ‘clean treasure’ from around the kinder.

We finished off the day with the whole group creating a map of our playground …

… all drawn by the children!

Then we went en masse, following the instructions on the map, through the playground until …

we found the treasure hidden in the ‘pirate boat’!

Naturally all the children were very excited to be able to take a piece of the precious treasure home!

Considering the early stage of the year, the children were amazingly cooperative and worked extremely well together as a group.

By the way, we changed a well known song, “A sailor went to sea, sea, sea” to “A pirate went to sea, sea, sea”! The children loved it!