Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

Pardon the pun’ but children are attracted to magnets!

Another great use of our segmented picture frame is using it with interesting, magnetic and non-magnetic objects. We set it up in an area for one person to experiment with, to determine which items had magnetic attraction and which ones didn’t. However as often happens in children’s play, more than one child was interesting in having a go…

… resulting in us having to dive into the cupboard to bring out more supplies of magnets, while the children scouted around to find various objects they wanted to put on the trays.

We had magnets inside and out, on floors and tables and they kept the children interested for ages as they experimented, discovered and played co-operatively together.

One child discovered just how powerful  magnets can be.

Naturally every one else wanted to perform magic tricks too!

When we ran out of trays we put out a couple old shirt boxes with pins, and magnetic discs inside and showed the children how they could make the contents move around by running the magnets underneath or across the clear top of the box – more magic.

Of course we didn’t think to stick the lids down …

and soon they were off and all the contents mixed up which made for a new activity … sorting the pins from the discs, and what a wonderful fine motor activity that one proved to be!

When we started discussing fossils last week, what they are, how they are found and who does the finding, the children loved the thought of being a paleontologist. So we thought, “OK, let’s give it a go!!”

After reading the story ‘Amanda’s Dinosaur’ by Wendy Orr we thought it would be fun for the children to create their own fossilized eggs.

We supplied balls of tacky clay  …

along with a variety of mini dinos, shells, stones and other small articles of interest.

The children buried their selected item deep into the middle of the clay…

and molded it into an egg shapes.

To make them more rock-like, we popped the finished balls out on the window ledge in the sun to dry out.

The next day, armed with hammers, large nails and brushes, we explained to the children how carefully the fossils needed to be uncovered to prevent them being destroyed …

then they chipped …

ever so carefully …

and brushed away …

still so carefully until …

they discovered …

their fossils!!

Most children chose to chip all the clay away …

and clean up their fossil …

while a few preferred to leave a little of the clay behind …

like the fossils they’d seen pictures of in our science books!

Of course we expected some children would be a little enthusiastic, causing their fossils to be damaged or destroyed, however, to the great delight of all of us, our budding paleontologists did such a careful job that 100% of fossils were successfully uncovered with out any damage!

And of course the fun didn’t end with the discovery of the fossils …

there was still plenty of fun to be had with the left over clay …

pounding it into dust!

What excitement … and so much FUN!

Many children at this early stage of the year still love to paint their hands and swirl them all over the easel paper. Such a wonderful sensory experience!

An added bonus of this is that they create wonderful mixes of colour and enjoy telling us what they have made.

As some children don’t enjoy getting paint all over their hands we thought that they could have a colour mixing experience which wasn’t so messy.

We mixed together primary coloured paints with glue and put them into bowls with little spoons.

The children popped little dobs of the gluey paint onto waxed paper, placed another sheet on top …

then spread the colours around with their hands.

The result was varied and interesting.

When they had dried out, the children cut around their shapes …

and we put them on the window …

so the light would shine through like stained glass.

One child said that they looked like stegosaurus spines.

We are playing a few different memory games with the children, in small and large groups.

We thought a great large group game would be the one where items are placed on a tray and covered.

One or two things are removed without the children looking (yeah, right!) and they tell us what has gone.

A pirate-themed one seemed obvious to us and amongst other things we had a mini pirate hat, like the children made with the newspaper.

Some children thought it was a sail boat so we all decided it would be great to see if we could make and float them.

We have to admit it wasn’t a great success – the boats just sogged up and sank. (Cover paper works a lot better).

It could perhaps be because we used a cut up street directory and the paper was way too thin.

Needless to say, the children gathered up other other floating objects from around the kinder …

as well as objects that didn’t float …

and had a heap of fun in the water, so all was not lost!

We chatted to the children about how the melway paper boats didn’t work and what we could use another time.

One bright spark came up with the idea of using corks to make boats, so that will become our next project.

We love music – listening, moving and dancing to it, singing along with it, relaxing by it, playing instruments to accompany it, and in particular we love to make our own music.

An instrument we made with the children last year has been in constant use in our music corner and the children never tire of playing with it.

It began as a science experiment when we were talking to the children about the way sound travels through air.  We filled four identical bottle with different levels of water.

The result being, the more water the bottle contained, the less air it held and the deeper the sound it resonated, less water in the bottle means more air, resulting in a higher pitch being produced. We use a wooden drumstick to tap out the different sounds.

The children commented on how similar the sounds of the musical bottles are to the sounds made by our very popular  marimba, a wonderful instrument Sherry’s Uncle Bill made for his grandchildren some years ago and has (fortunately) made its way to us at kinder!

Some children found it quite difficult to determine which bottles created the higher and deeper pitches but older children might be better able to distinguish the difference and line them up from deepest pitch to highest.

Due to its constant use we have had to replace the liquid in the bottles over time and using different coloured water simply adds a new dimension to a favourite instrument.

We like to provide the children with a selection of bottles, glasses or jars, a tub of water and a funnel, and allow them to make their own music by filling the containers with as much or as little water as they want. The more containers they have the greater the variety of pitch they can create.

Simple science is music to the ears!

With the weather heating up in Melbourne, we try to find activities that are fun but not too strenuous and can be enjoyed in the shade. You can’t go past bubbles!

Donna used some metal coat hangers to make dippers in different sizes, and as it is difficult to make perfect circles, naturally we ended up with odd shapes.

We popped the dippers and bubble mix outside in the shade …

… and off the children went!

Some children wondered if the bubbles would be different shapes if the dipper was not round and were interested to see how they blew out in an odd shape, but became round.

We soon had bubbles flying in all directions around the playground. We were impressed by the number of children who commented “We’re blowing the bubbles up with air from our lungs” as well as “When the bubble pops the air comes out”!

They soon discovered that chasing and catching the bubbles was as much fun as blowing them.

It wasn’t long before the children were challenging each other to catch the best bubbles.

WHOA!  … I think we have a winner!

We have discovered three collective nouns for frogs;

a knot of frogs - an army of frogs – a colony of frogs

The language that is collective nouns is so interesting and you don’t need to be a child to enjoy learning new language !  And you don’t need to be a child to enjoying learning about tadpoles either.

They have created a real buzz around kinder leading to a multitude of questions and creating great excitement, not only from our students but their parents and carers as well. So in order to better understand exactly what is going on we have been exploring a lovely book with the children called “GrowingFrogs” by Vivian French.

It is a great story about metamorphosis which follows the life cycle of a frog right through from frog spawn to frog.

The lovely illustrations have captured the children’s imaginations and they burst into kinder each day to check to see if the taddies in our tank are changing like those in the book.

Ours is a giant sized book with giant sized pictures …

… and  it’s an exciting way for them to see what will soon be happening to our tadpoles, (fingers crossed!)

The opening page reads; “Once, when I was little, my mum read me a story about a frog that drank and drank, and grew bigger and bigger and bigger“.

Several of the children got very excited by this.

“It’s Tiddalick!  She must have read the story of Tiddalick“.

‘TIDDALICK The frog who caused a flood’ written by Robert Roennfeldt is another great frog story the children have enjoyed hearing.

We have a good selection of frog books which the children can access from our library shelves and many of the children are enjoying pulling them out to look at.

Some of our other favourites include; ‘Green Air‘ by  Jill Morris, ‘The Wide-Mouthed Frog‘ by Keith Faulkner, ’The most colourful frog in the world‘ by Julie Morris and  ’Picasso, the green tree frog by Amanda Graham.

There is a lot of science that we do with the children which is quick and needs very little preparation. Of course that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t get the children thinking.

We have done the first part of this experiment with them before, but it is always a good thing to do a repeat performance.

We held up two identical pieces of paper and asked them which piece would land on the ground first. (They landed together)

Then we scrunched up one piece and dropped them at the same time. Most children remembered how the aerodynamics worked, which meant the ball of paper dropped more rapidly.

Next Sherry held up a tennis ball and a basketball at the same height to see which would hit the ground first. They hit at the same time.

We did the experiment a different way, this time holding the tennis ball on top of the basketball right in the middle.

When they landed the tennis ball went shooting off right up to the ceiling!! The children just cracked up.

When we questioned the children why this happened to the balls, in both groups some clever possums said it was the bounce from the big ball which sent the little ball shooting off, and they were absoloutely right.  It is the shock waves from the bottom of the basketball shooting up to the top of it and into the tennis ball, which sends it careering off.

An analogy would be that if you hit the back of your head hard, you would end up with two black eyes from the shock waves which bounced through your brain from the back to the front … pretty scary stuff!

We waited until we went outside to give the children a go.

Step 1. Hold the tennis ball on top of the basketball, directly in the center.

Step 2. Drop both balls together and stand back …

… as the tennis ball goes bouncing high into the air!

The children eagerly lined up and patiently took turns at the experiment, helping each other to find the center of the ball … we so love the way the children help each other out!

Time and time again the children tried the experiment, and time and time again they were amazed by what happened.

The trick is to find the center of the basketball.

We are sooo lucky!!! Things just seem to fall into place for the children and us. Just as we are getting excited about frogs and discussing metamorphosis, Sherry’s son said, “We have a heap of taddies in a tub on our verandah, Mum. Would you like some for kinder?” (As they were not taken from the wild, we are confident that it is OK to bring them here.)

Next thing, here they are, nestled next to the snails and ants – what a menagerie we have at the moment.

We had just set them up as the children poured into kinder and they couldn’t wait to look at them.  Naturally they reached for those ever popular magnifying glasses. Some children didn’t even get to pop their bags away before they were peering into the tub.

Just as they are with our snails and ants, the children are endlessly fascinated with the tadpoles. It’s wonderful to see them showing such an interest in nature, asking endless questions about the process of metamorphosis, wanting to know about the different foods our creatures like to eat as well as noticing the vast differences in their living environments. Children are so inquisitive and do love to learn interesting facts and information!

Please note that you usually need a licence from your relevant State Government to keep tadpoles. In our case they are Southern Brown Tree Frogs (Litoria ewingi) so we don’t need a licence for them. We will ensure that they are released back into their own environment.

For information on care of tadpoles and frogs, get in touch with the Amphibian Research Centre through our ‘Frogs’ link.

As a precursor to an activity we will be inviting the children to do soon, we put out some eye droppers and coloured water for them.

They LOVE using eye droppers! We also put out a variety of papers over a week or so.

When the paper had a sheen to it, the paint ran off in interesting dribbles.

The children often put way too much on, so they also ended up with a big blob all intermingled, which looks pretty interesting too.

Watch the floor as they try to juggle their pictures outside to the drying rack!! It is a good idea in this case to have a container for them to carry their masterpieces out in.

When the paper has a little more absorption, the paintings ended up being a mix of runny and blobby, depending on how much the children squirted on.

Lastly we put out paper towel which has huge absorption, so again, quite a different look to the end result. In every case there was a wonderful mixing of colours and many excited children exclaiming about the magic they had performed.