Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

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.

As a follow up to the children discovering that their pyramid pointers floated, we chatted about what other things we could make which would float. Amongst various suggestions they thought we could put corks together some way, as they all knew that corks float anyway.

We put out corks, pop sticks, masking tape and card and left them to it.

Some children put two corks together with masking tape and added a mast and sail.

The benefit of the masts was that as they tended to go below the boats, it gave them a keel, which helped with the balance.

Some children struggled with the tape, so we popped out elastic bands …

… which worked well.

We started to see rafts as well when children didn’t want a sail.

One inventive child went to the boxes and found a plastic container which floated really well and made his own grand design!