Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

Following our Wild Action incursion, we enlarged some photos of the animals we saw.

We then laminated them and put a velcro dot on the back so we could use them on a felt board.

By adding Australian bush props, the children could make up their own scenarios.

The children then made their own animals …

… popped the dots on the back and used mini felt boards which we had obtained from Reverse Art.

We also used these animals for a “Who am I?” game.

One at a time the children would choose an animal and pop it on the felt board out of sight of the others. They then described the creatures features, such as, “I am cold blooded, I have scoot scales on my tail, I have 66 teeth etc … Who am I?”

The children were so great at this game. They clearly took in a lot of information during our Wild Action visit!

When our Pre-kinder children arrived …

… they replaced the Aussie animals with a bucketload of felt characters and farm animals …

… and had a great time creating their own stories and play scenarios.

Quite a few of our families are heading off for holidays at the moment, mostly to sunny spots such as Fiji or Queensland. As the children’s interest in snails hasn’t waned, we asked them what sort of holiday a snail would have considering they move so slowly. The sorts of ideas the children came up with were “The next plant” or “The next door neighbours”.

We asked them to think about what sort of holiday they would like to go on if they were snails and they came up with some great destination ideas like; the moon, the supermarket, Queensland, Fairyland, the beach, the footy and the city!

They drew their snails, …

… some drew their holiday destination too.

Then an adult wrote the holiday story out for them …

… if they couldn’t do it themselves.

One child who wrote his own said, “I wanted my snail to go to the circus, but I didn’t know the word. Then I thought he could go to church, but I didn’t know the word, so he is going to the farm because I DID know that word!“

At the end of each session the children read out their own stories to the others.

Then we made their stories into books …

…  for everyone to enjoy.

Collective nouns can be beautiful and evocative, even poetic!

Like the collective noun for snails …

… ‘an ascargatoire’ of snails!  How magnificent is that?!

Then there is also a rout of snails and a walk of snails

Here’s an nice, simple poem we taught the children about snails.

If you get excited about collective nouns like we do, or simply enjoy learning new and interesting language, visit our ‘collective nouns’ link, and like us you may just discover a whole new language!