Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

Here’s a wonderful action chant we like to do with our children when they need to burn off a little energy. It’s called “Hi, my name is Joe“. It’s great for getting the children up and moving. It’s loads of fun and a good gross motor exercise!

We chant it like this -

Hi, my name is Joe and I work in a button factory. One day my boss came up to me and said “Are you busy Joe?” and I said “No” …

“Well push this button with your hand!”

Using one hand (to push an imaginary button up and down or in and out) the song repeats …

Hi, my name is Joe and I work in a button factory. One day my boss came up to me and said “Are you busy Joe?” and I said “No” …

… “Well push this button with your other hand!”

Using two hands the song repeats …

Hi, my name is Joe and I work in a button factory. One day my boss came up to me and said “Are you busy Joe?” and I said “No” …

… “Well push this button with your foot!”

Using two hands and one foot the song repeats …

Hi, my name is Joe and I work in a button factory. One day my boss came up to me and said “Are you busy Joe?” and I said “No” …

… “Well push this button with your other foot!”

Using two hands and two feet the song repeats …

Hi, my name is Joe and I work in a button factory. One day my boss came up to me and said “Are you busy Joe?” and I said “No” …

… “Well push this button with your head!”

Using two hands, two feet and your head the song repeats …

Hi, my name is Joe and I work in a button factory. One day my boss came up to me and said “Are you busy Joe?” and I said “No” …

… “Well push this button with your tongue!’

Using two hands, two feet, your head and your tongue the song repeats …

Hi, my name is Joe and I work in a button factory. One day my boss came up to me and said “Are you busy Joe?” and I said (with hands on hips and stamping one foot hard to the ground … “YES!“

Here in Melbourne it is Fathers’ Day on the first Sunday in September. We are not inclined to make a big fuss about presents and cards, but we nearly always like to do a ‘why I love my Dad’ thing, similar to what we did for the mums earlier in the year.

Again we were given an idea from one of the children – they are so good, aren’t they?

Charlotte gave us this picture to hang up.

She cut out clothes from ribbon, taped it onto a piece of paper, then drew the head, arms and feet with black pencil.

We thought it looked great and would be a different way for the children to create pictures of their dads. We slightly adapted what Charlotte had done by offering the children a selection of plain and patterned paper and left them to come up with some great ideas.

Some children carefully drew the clothes on the coloured paper first, before cutting them out and pasting them to white paper.

Some careful informal measuring also took place so that the tops fitted the bottoms.

Others of course were not so fussy.

Many of them included themselves in the picture too and regardless of the way they were made each one was as unique as it was beautiful!

The children then dictated a story, to our student Nikki, about why they love their dads which was typed up, printed out and pasted onto their beautiful pictures.

Then the old favourite once more …

laminating the finished product.

Simple but effective. We hope the dads like them.

Thanks for the irresistible idea Charlotte!

As a follow up to the book ‘Clever Sticks‘ we read last week …

we thought the children would enjoy cooking up some fried rice and have the opportunity to eat a delicious meal with chop sticks.

We gave them knives to chop up some carrot, celery and bacon.

Using knives is not new to our children as we do a lot of cooking at kinder.

However cooking in the fry pan was something the children had not experienced with us before so they all lined up to have a go at stirring the rice.

Most of it even stayed in the the pan!

Using chopsticks to move cotton balls around like they did last week was certainly a different experience to actually attempting to eat with them.

Some children came up with very interesting techniques to get the food into their mouths …

while others coped with the chop stick action amazingly well!

Not surprisingly though, when Sherry arrived at the table bearing spoons and forks many of the children were very quick to accept here offer of help!

While a large number of children did give into the cutlery …

a handful stuck the chop stick challenge out to the end … so impressive!