Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

During third term at our kindergarten we run a program called “Star of the Week” where each child is a star for a week. They wear a star badge, have a special chair to sit in, have first choice at activities, talk all about themselves, do their favourite activity with a small group of children helped by one of their parents, and so on.

One of the highlights is that Donna draws around the shadow of their faces and cuts their silhouettes out of black paper. These are then mounted on coloured card of their choice, laminated and placed around the room for all to see and admire.

The interest shown by the children in how shadows are made, led onto the following activity.

shadows in the winter sun

We had been experiencing some quite miserable weather here in Melbourne, hence the mud play. One day, a weak, winter sun came out, enough to cast shadows on the ground.

We asked one of our children to make an interesting body shape and we drew around him.

Then he lay down on the shadow and the children could see how elongated it was compared to his actual size thanks to that low morning winter sun!

When the children came inside, some of them grabbed various objects from around the room and popped them onto the mat in a sunny spot to see what shadows they made as well.

This led to lots of experimentation from the children inside and out.

Outside they enjoyed drawing around each other’s shadows …

…as well as different play equipment.

We asked our young friend to stand in the same spot just before lunch time and again drew around his shadow. It was fascinating to see how far the sun had moved and what direction it went in just a few hours. His shadow had shortened considerably too, although it was still bigger than he was.

Over the next week or so this really took off and an exciting thing we found was that the children (generally a small group of boys) who are not usually interested in picking up a pencil or paint were doing all sorts of wonderful chalk drawings on the concrete!

We came across this great set of shadow boxes in a second hand shop and we have used them in a multitude of ways all over the kinder.

Here we teamed them with some very popular plastic insects we bought from a local discount store.  We set them up on the floor inside a large cardboard box lid lined with a laminated board we got from reverse art. It has a texture that resembles smooth pebbles set in concrete, so we added some more textures through natural materials and spread a soft cow hide on the floor for texture and comfort.

The children were able to move the boxes and props around to suit their play, adding extra bits & pieces from the shelves as needed.

Being down at floor level, where beetles and insects are found, made the children’s play more dramatic. As the floor takes away boundaries, the children were able to spread their play out as they marched their insects back and forth across the floor and around the table and chair legs nearby.

We witnessed some lovely imaginary play here and heard some great language as the children closely examined the insects, discussing their names and habitats.

As part of our Star of the Week program, our parents came into kinder to do activities with the children. One made the lovely old fashioned ‘open, shut them’ games which the children just loved!

We found that the children needed a bit of help getting the folds right as it is a bit complicated, but they are great at squashing the fold lines to make them good and sharp.

On the outside sections they had colours - the words and a matching coloured spot .

On the next two layers they had numbers…

… and in the middle some fun actions, such as “Do 15 star jumps” and “Make a monkey face and noise”.

When we come back from the term holidays, we will try doing a big one of these with a large group of children. Let’s see now – there is colour and number recognition, fine and gross motor activity, literacy, playing with a friend, having fun … What a great thing to do!

Paper planes, straw gliders, pyramid pointers and now another ‘flying machine’ is zooming around our playground and has become a favourite amongst the children this week. This time it’s a……… helicopter thingy! This invention came about when the children were practicing with different ideas for flying machines. You know how it is…an accidental discovery.

It involves two pieces of thin card which we collected from Reverse Art www.reverse-art-truck.zoomshare.com in Ringwood.  The children joined them together in a X with masking tape …

… and decorated them with crayons.

Working out the best way to throw it was very interesting. Some children threw it flat which caused it to spin and travel slower and to the side, while others threw it like a boomerang, which travelled faster as the blades sliced their way through the air.

With all the wonderful flying machines the children have been making it looks like an airport has sprouted up in the playground these days!

When we were discussing how an object flies through the air or goes through the water with more ease when it has a pointed shape, we tried to throw a flat piece of paper. It went a very short distance then floated down to the ground.

This led to a chat about how the air supports that flat, wide shape, causing it to float to the ground rather than drop straight down.

We showed the children how to make pyramid pointers to illustrate this – fold a square of paper into diagonals, open it up, then do it the other way.

Open and see four triangles. Pinch one triangle in, push its sides together and tape them.

They were fascinated at how they always descended point first, regardless of how they were thrown up, due to the pointy end moving through the air faster than the bigger end.

As the pyramid pointer floated through the air the children wondered whether it would float in water – which naturally led onto what floats and what sinks and why!

A visit to Tinternwood Farm at Tintern Girls Grammar School was a highlight for our pre-kindergarten children recently.

Tinternwood is a lovely farm nestled on twenty two acres, not too far from our kinder.  Its location is really convenient for our families so we were able to meet the parents and children in the car park at an arranged time, and stroll down to the farm together to meet up with Farmer Gavin.

We are very fortunate to have wonderful families who always support our program and make themselves available to accompany their children on our excursions, as we wouldn’t be able to do it without them.

The children and parents all came well prepared for the cold with coats and gumboots but as the weather was absolutely perfect, umbrellas were left in the car…woohoo!

We had discussed with the children the kinds of things we would see and experience at the farm, such as sheep … mud and poop.  Cows … mud and poop. Chickens … mud and poop …  and of course … mud and poop! So, although the ground was relatively free of mud those gumboots definitely came in handy!

The children were so exited as this was the first time many of them had experienced farm life.  The farm is really hands-on and the children were all encouraged by Farmer Gavin, with the help of the Tintern students to get up close and pat the animals and ask lots of questions.

We patted and cuddled day old lambs …

… rubbed the belly of a friendly brown cow …

… handled freshly laid eggs and stroked the silkiest feathers of some of the most unusual chicken we have ever seen.

Spring was certainly in the air on the farm and we were very lucky to witness a ewe giving birth to a set of twins while we were strolling through the paddocks.

It was wonderful and amazing and definitely a highlight for the parents and children…. that and seeking out fresh sheep poop to squish beneath little people’s feet …well naturally… I mean, why else would you wear gumboots to the farm… after all there wasn’t a rain cloud in sight!

The hour and a half we spent at the farm was the perfect length of time for the children to explore the animals, have a bit of a run around and enjoy morning/afternoon tea with Mum or Dad.

We have been visiting Tinterwood Farm for a number of years and as always Farmer Gavin and the students were very patient and attentive with the children, which ensured we all had a wonderful day.

Our visit to ‘Tinternwood Farm’ at Tintern Girls Grammar School has lead to a lot of discussion recently about…

cows and milk …

… chickens and eggs …

… sheep and wool…

… and of course farm machines!

So naturally the children’s interests have revolved around the farm and the animals we encounted.

We’ve read the books Little pink pig, by Pat Hutchins, Old Macdonald had a farm, illustrated by Pam Adams and The chicken book, by Garth Williams.

We’ve sung Old Macdonald had a farm, Five little duck’s, Baa baa black sheep, and I went to visit a farm one day.

We’ve danced to the Scarecrow song and The farmer in the dell as well as stamp, paint, draw, paste, play and puzzle our way through a variety of great farm activities.

Our bush box is currently home to our large farm animals, with plenty of natural materials like tanbark, grasses, logs, rocks, branches and wooden blocks provided for the children to use as props.

The children love the bush box as it is a very social area and they can climb right inside it and become totally involved in their play. If you don’t have a bush box like ours a child’s clam shell style pool would be ideal for this kind of play.

It’s great to be able to bring the outside in, on a hot or rainy day.

Around September most years we take our children to see the ballet of Peter and the Wolf. It is staged by a local ballet school and is very well done. The children love it.

We make sure they get the most out of it by playing the music a lot, even incidentally in the background as they are doing other things, reading the story to them, having puppet shows and acting it out.

We even practice sitting as an audience and listening to the music, and story being read on CD.

Even in the playground they continued acting out the story.

By the time they actually see the show they know it back to front.

All this beautiful music seems to have spurred a largish group of children to request a big variety of classical music to be put on every day for weeks so they can dance and act out dramas to it. Some of the girls do ballet classes and have been showing off their skills.

Our student teacher picked up on this and asked if they would like to make some props to aid their dancing. They decided on something they could whoosh around and settled on attaching colourful ribbons to pop sticks.They danced and leapt around the room whizzing these colourful streamers, a bit like gymnasts do, and had a wonderful time.

Our student teacher found some pictures of the five positions in ballet which the children copied. It was gorgeous seeing them assume the correct stances.

Parents often ask us how we incorporate maths into our program. We explain to them that maths is everywhere!

It’s at the invention table as children work out the size of the box they need in order to create their inventions. It’s in the length of the sticky tape that’s require to attach things or working out how many wheels they need to build a car. It’s at the play dough table when they divide the dough between themselves or make a dozen cup cakes. It’s in the playground when they want to know how many children are joining into their play and how many buckets of sand it takes to fill the wheel barrow.  It’s in all the thinking which goes into those odd shaped puzzle pieces they need to fit together and the fine motor construction they play with … and the list goes on and on!

We have many tubs of fine motor construction which the children have access to at all times…

…  and we find this tile construction is a very popular and creative choice. It has triangles, diamonds, hexagons, squares and trapeziums (a triangle with the top cut off), all great for pattern making and all play based maths!

The best thing about pattern making is that the children don’t know, or care that it’s a math’s concept. For them it is just play … and that is exactly the way it should be!

We use these small wooden logs in a lot of our imaginary play.  They are thickish branches cut into different sizes.

Here we have used them with some gorgeous owls which Donna made.

We also added some old bird nests which Sherry had brought in, along with other natural materials.

The tiny owls are simply from a game we had in the cupboard.