Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

Teacher Tom who teaches in Seattle Washington at Woodland Park Cooperative Preschool noticed the tyres and boards in our playground in one of our recent posts and showed an interest in what they were all about.

So we thought we’d share with you what we use them for and how we set up our outdoor play space each day!

This is our arrangement from last week (we change it often to create different challenges).

We’re lucky to have a large shade sail over a portion of our soft fall area so even if the weather is stinking hot or a little wet we are able to get outside and play EVERY day … Thank goodness!

We like to offer our children lots of opportunities for gross motor exercise and there’s no better place to do that than in an inviting outdoor play space.

We include logs,planks and beams for balancing along…

assorted ladders …

and ‘A Frames’ for climbing up, over, and down …

our trampoline for jumping.

Monkey bars for swinging underneath

and climbing across the top …

tyres for climbing in  …

on and over.

Then of course we have one of the children’s favourite pieces of equipment – the big blue mat!

which they love to jump on to …

and we mean LOVE!

This is just a fraction of the gross motor opportunities we provide the children. We haven’t mentioned the fireman pole, swings, slide, sandpit, digging patch, cargo net, swinging pole, ball sports, wooden blocks, row boat, cubby building, and other props and equipment yet OR …

our irresistible climbing tree …

or two.

But all that will just have to wait for another day !

Come visit us and many more inspiring ideas at the

‘childhood 101′

We Play Link Up

On April 22nd we celebrated Earth Day here at kinder.

Several of the children commented on the fact we didn’t have the lights on when they arrived at kinder … “ooooh! Are we having candles today?” asked Amali!

We explained the idea behind Earth Day and discussed with the children ways they thought we could look after our planet. They came up with some very sweet ideas – be kind to each other (?), pick up rubbish, recycle our paper, put our fruit scraps into the compost bin, don’t fight with our brothers and sisters, give someone a friendship leaf (that’s a post for another day) … oh you’ve got to love five year olds!

We  offered the children a few ideas which they thought about and decided we should follow.

So the lights stayed off …

we used only recycled materials for our art work …

planted some more Australian native plants into our garden …

recycled all our paper rubbish and composted our food scraps.

Even our friend Virginia showed her full support for the program when she arrived to lead the children in our “Mini Maestros” music program …

by using battery power with her ipod.

We displayed a small poster which read “Celebrating Earth Day 2010″

Amali took a real interest in the whole Earth Day concept and drew her own delightful version of our  poster!

Over the last couple of years we’ve put measures in place at kinder to support environmental awareness by -

1. Sourcing as many of our art materials as possible from recycling depots like “Reverse Art Truck”.

2. Sending our notices and information to our ninety eight families via email.

3. Recycling where possible, including shopping bags, papers and printer ink       cartridges.

4. Installing a rainwater tank to sustain our garden and water play.

5. Introducing a rubbish free snack policy.

6. Introducing a compost bin.

7. Planting Australian Native plants into our garden and playground.

8. Purchasing wooden blocks and equipment made from plantation timbers.

9. Installing 15 second tap timers in the children’s bathroom.

10. Avoiding the use of harsh chemicals for cleaning

We’re sure there must be other ways we could be supporting our environment.

If you have any good ideas we’d be very interested to hear them!

 

Oh boy have the children been busy in the hush garden this past week!

Here’s how it looked on the last day of term one.

Then during the holidays we purchased some lovely native plants …

built a raised garden bed at the top end of the garden …

marked out a rough plan of where we wanted the dry creek bed to flow…

and positioned some of the native grasses, just to see how it might look, so when the children returned for the new term, the real fun and hard work could begin.

However, this is where disaster struck! Oh not for the Hush Garden, that is looking amazing. The disaster is Donna’s computer chucked a hissy fit before she could edit the photos into this post and now she can’t recover the photos off her computer … aarrrgggghhhhhh!

BUT … we still want to invite you in for a look around!

These photos are of the finished make over . (The gum tree and rocks in the center are what we started with) …

then we built our dry creek bed … yippeee …around them …

with a small rustic bridge …

and some beautiful new plants including …

Australian native grasses …

flowering gum trees …

and shrubs …

as well as gravel paths and wooden posts for interest.

We just can’t show you the photos of the children at work … You know the ones … Where the children scooped and barrowed soil and plants. Dug, planted and watered in the trees, grasses and schrubs. Carried stones and hauled rocks. Tipped pebbles and Lilydale toppings. Then shovelled, smoothed, swept and raked it all and  … ohhh … how disappointing that you can’t see them hard at it … #*@/:& computers!

The dry creek bed begins up beside the old weeping willow tree (top left of photo) and travels down under the small bridge, full circle around the rock garden and disappears behind the large rock (bottom right of photo)!

So … while you imagine all the ground work in action, Donna will seek help to recover the photos … we’d really love you to see them because …

we are so proud of the way the children worked and are absolutely thrilled with the result!

The children love it …

and have been very busy …

exploring their new play space.

They enjoyed the planting side of the make over so much that we have ventured a little further into the playground and planted some new flowers and grasses …

inside some tyres to create a new border along the concrete path.

(Fortunately, these photos were still on the camera … phew!)

This irresistible play space will continue to be a work in progress and the next job will be to incorporate more plantings as well as garden art which the children will be invited to create.

We’re thinking – painted ‘totem poles’ using these very interestingly shaped branches will look great so we’ll work on that with the children over the next week or so …

and of course we’ll have a crop of mushrooms to harvest this week also.

So while Donna seeks help with her photos … please watch this space!