Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

One day one of the children brought in a case moth he had found in his garden.

He had been following this little creature around his garden for about a week, finding it in a different place each day.  The children were totally fascinated by the way it crawled around carrying its home along with it as it looked for food.

We explained to the children that the process a caterpillar goes through to become a moth or butterfly is called metamorphosis and we used the story of The very hungry caterpillar to explain it in a language they could understand. The very ordinary caterpillar is another lovely book they enjoyed.

They also had a great time acting out the story with The very hungry caterpillar felt board.

Metamorphosis is a fascinating concept for children so we pulled out a couple of metamorphosis puzzles on the life cycles of the butterfly and the frog.

In keeping with the tadpole / frog interest we are currently experiencing at kinder we set up a frog bog using lots of natural materials, frogs (the odd crocodile or two …  naturally) and our frog metamorphosis set.

Including materials like rocks and logs from our garden the water soon resembled a muddy frog bog. It was spectacular!

We have a wonderful frogbog CD which we played (hidden behind a fern) in the background, which made the play space sound and feel like we really were exploring a natural frog bog.

This CD doesn’t contain music just incredible Australian frog calls. It’s so amazing and the children were fascinated by the sounds real frogs make….not one single gribbet to be heard let alone a gulumph!

We have a great song we taught the children about metamorphosis and Sherry made some fabulous prop cards which the children use to act out the song.

Here are the words to the song – METAMORPHOSIS

Kittens look like cats,

and puppies look like dogs,

so why don’t little tadpoles, look like little frogs.

Bear cubs look like bears,

and little sloths like sloths,

so why don’t caterpillars look like little moths.

Kittens, puppies and other things don’t need a special process.

But caterpillars and tadpoles do.

They go through MET – A – MOR – PHO – SIS!

PS. The case moth was returned to the garden and a few weeks later our young friend discovered the empty case … how wonderful!

You can see some amazing photos of case moths and other incredible insects  through our ‘Moths & Butterflies’ link.

After learning some fascinating facts about green tree frogs at our recent incursion, we seem to have gone into a bit of a frog frenzy.

Did you know they drink water through their skin? Did you know they peel off and eat their skin weekly? Did you know they catch flies, pop them into their mouths and roll their eyes around and around pushing the food down to their tummies? We didn’t – fabulous stuff!

We have pulled out the old favourite songs such as “Mr Frog jumped out of his pond one day“.

And a couple of the children’s favourite books, “Picasso the Green Tree Frog” and “Frog Friends“.

We popped out some coloured card, scissors, felt pens and staplers for the children to make their own frogs.

We took the opportunity to have a skill session and reminded them how to do fan folding.

They could make the frogs legs this way if they wished.

Some preferred straight legs.

They were all individual!

Another green tree frog fact: He can change colour to blend into his environment!

We have been talking about solids and liquids using water and freezing it, see our ‘Water Shapes’ post under Science / Technology on September 13th.

The natural progression is to move onto gas and after a very heavy downpour of rain recently followed by brilliant sunshine the children noticed something strange was happening in the playground …

…’smoke‘ (steam) was coming off the shade sails …

… as well as the ground and play equipment!

Naturally this provided us with a great opportunity to talk about what happens when air and water heats up.

We showed the children boiling water and discussed what the steam is. Most children called it smoke at first. They noted how it went up into the air and didn’t fall down to the ground due to the hot air rising.

This led to a by the way discussion about how we need to get down low if we are caught in a fire and another opportunity to reinforce dialing OOO in an emergency following our recent police visit, see our ‘Stranger Danger‘ post under Incursions/Excursions on October 23rd – working with children is never a predictable thing!

Before illustrating how hot air rises, we showed the children an empty bottle and asked them what was in it.  Most said nothing, a couple said air.

We placed a balloon on the top of the bottle and asked the children how we could blow it up from there. Naturally they said we could use our mouth, or a balloon pump but we asked them how we could do it without removing the balloon from the bottle.

Most had no idea but one clever child said to squeeze the bottle, which worked very well.

To illustrate how hot air rises and cold air falls we placed the bottle into some boiling water and slowly the air in the bottle warmed up and went into the balloon making it stand up straight – this always elicits lots of laughter, particularly from the mums!

We then popped the bottle into cold water and as the air cooled the balloon slowly shrank again. This can be repeated a few times until the hot water gets a bit too cool to warm up the air sufficiently.

As the children can’t do this experiement by themselves due to the boiling water factor, a science activity they can do which allows them to have fun with hot air rising, is to make spirals, just like the spiral snakes we made, see our ‘Wild Action and Spirals’ post under Science / Technology on October 27th. Hanging the spirals from a piece of string over a light bulb, the heat from the light warms the air, it rises up, and the spiral gently turns around.

It’s a good idea to turn the lamp on to warm up while the children are preparing their spirals.

Depending on which direction their spiral turned some of the children commented on their spiral winding up or winding down.  One child even said “It looks like my snake is trying to climb up the string to get me!”

More great science! More great fun! More great play based learning!

The other day one of our kinder children asked if we could get “The old lady who ate all the animals” down from the shelf.

We have the funniest cloth doll depicting the old lady who swallowed the fly, complete with all the insects and animals which go with her story.

The children really enjoy drama, so a small group of children soon gathered around and Donna explained the story to them. It was delightful to see the children’s faces as they realized the impossible task which lay ahead for the old lady!

Each of the children then chose a character to feed her ; fly, spider, bird, cat, dog, goat, cow and a horse of course!

Donna sang the story to the children, as this was how she learnt it as a young girl. Each child waited with anticipation for their turn to feed the old woman, taking great delight in stuffing their insect or animal into her mouth and pushing it well down into her belly!

After several groups of children had taken part in acting out the story with Donna, she brought out the book of the same title and the children helped her to read the story aloud.

The children then went on to ‘read’ the story from the book themselves and using the puppet they continued to act out the story over and over again.

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Some of the children even sang the story!

Helping each other out and following the pictures in the book, they had memorised the story really well and between them they didn’t miss a line.

It was delightful co-operative fun, incorporating great language, literacy, music and drama as well as numeracy and imaginary play … perfect play based learning!

Of course if you don’t have an old lady puppet, any hand puppet could be used in her place, even a sock puppet would work really well, and any number of different types of animals could be substituted for the characters she ate.

Older children could make up their own characters and lyrics … they don’t have to rhyme … they could draw pictures and write down their stories and make a book. Perhaps they could even go so far as to make their own puppet and characters!

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a bird … How absurd to swallow a bird!

She swallowed the bird to catch the spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a cat … Fancy that, she swallowed a cat!

She swallowed the cat to catch the bird … She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a dog … what a hog to swallow a dog!

She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, she swallowed the cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a goat … what a joke to swallow a goat!

She swallowed the goat to catch the dog, she swallowed the dog to catch the cat, she swallowed the cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a cow … I don’t know how she swallowed a cow!

She swallowed the cow to catch the goat, she swallowed the goat to catch the dog, she swallowed the dog to catch the cat, she swallowed the cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a horse … she’s dead of course!

When we were watching a snake from Wild Action crawl back into its bag, the children noticed how it curled itself around and around. After a bit of discussion they decided he had made a spiral shape. As a large group we held hands in a line and made a spiral with our bodies. As we had had a think about where we find spirals in nature, the children were aware that snails have a spiral shell, so we sang this little song as we went around -

“Snail, snail, snail, snail, goes around and round and round.”

We gave the children the opportunity to create their own spirals as a precursor to a science activity we will be doing soon.

It is a lot of cutting which needs to be fairly exact and we were excited at how well they did.

They were very pleased with the end results.

We brought in a big basket of apples and the apple peeler/slicer which most schools seem to have in their classrooms, or are available for about $25 in shops like “House”.

The machine peels off the skin …

… slices the apple into a spiral and decores it.

Besides the obvious gross motor activity, what a lot of maths language we heard – put the apple on, wind it forwards/backwards, it’s cutting around, is it finished, look at the spiral peel/apple …

A wonderful by product of this discovery of spirals is that the children start seeing them all around them …

… eg; a shell which is at the play dough table …

… having fun with magnetic play …

… in the finger paint …

… and how you can make beautiful spirals in slime!

The children really enjoy participating in group projects. Recently we were given a large box which we thought would make an ideal weaving loom, one big enough for several children to share at the same time.

We placed small cuts along the sides of the box and threaded it up with some shoe lacing we found in the tubs at the invention table.

We gathered together assorted recycled materials, and collected some interesting sticks which had fallen from the willow tree in our playground.

A terrific fine motor and cognitive activity, the children had to concentrate very hard on weaving the items under and over the strings in order for them not to fall out.

We could hear some of the children chanting …under, over, under, over, under, over!

The beauty of an activity like this is, once it has been completed or the children loose interest, you can undo the weaving, recycle the items for use in other activities, and recycle the box or store it to use for a weaving project another day.

We have had a great incursion to our kindergarten called “Wild Action – the zoo comes to you“. A very animated presenter shows and talks about a selection of Australian animals, reptiles in particular, with a lot of hands on action by the children.

It is a great starting off point for many aspects of the curriculum. There is the obvious discussion about Australian animals and comparison of the different species – mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians  – and what sets them apart from each other. Our first follow up was putting together a book about the show, the animals we saw and what we were told about them. Reading and discussing it together was a fabulous large group activity, and then the children referred to it individually.

Following that the children drew a picture of their favourite animal (not always the one they held) and labelled it themselves. In most instances the children copied the names, but some are at the stage they can write words by themselves or with a little prompting. School children would probably be able to write more extensively and descriptively.

We added their photos of when they held the animals, then everyone came to the front of the group and read out their own stories.

The children really enjoy story writing and being able to read their stories aloud to their friends.

One of the most popular Australian authors at our kindergarten is Pamela Allen. Her books are fun and bright and often lead to science experimentation. An example of this is ‘Alexander’s Outing‘ about a duck which falls down a hole and floats back up to the top when people pour water into the hole.

The children love the story, but also enjoy saving Alexander themselves – easy done with a tall container, a jug of water and a small duck.

Don’t foget to pop some plastic …

…or a tray underneath as it ALWAYS overflows!

If you don’t have a floating duck you could use anything from a cork to a ping-ping ball.

We have lovely families who are most accomodating at our kindergarten. We have found that if they are in a profession and can offer their services to us, they always do.

This week we were lucky enough to have one of our mums, who is in the police force and stationed at the Ringwood Police Station, give the children a talk about what the job of the police is and on stranger danger.

She was able to bring the police car which she borrowed from our friends at the Croydon Police Station, right into our yard so the children could see the lights and hear the siren.

They all popped into it and had a look, with some lucky children firing up the siren themselves!

The big OOO on the side reinforced the emergency number to ring.

This provides a starting off point for other talks about our helpers in the community.

We had some paper plates left over from an eatfest, so popped them out on the table with containers of coloured tissue paper and glue.

We like to leave it up to the children to decide what they would like to do with the materials which we present and just see where they go with it – we find they often have much better ideas than we would have. Children are good at thinking outside the square.

They enjoyed dipping the tissue paper into the glue instead of the using the usual brush.

We were blown away with the variety of shapes and patterns the children came up with.  Some children enjoyed doing quite intricate work …

… while others went for the whole hand scrunch.

Sticky, slimy fingers – yummy!

Whatever way they went, they had fun!