Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

Five fat sausages is a chant children really enjoy acting out.

Last week we taught it to our children before they went off to play.

Five children at a time were invited to stand in front of the group to act out the chant and as each sausage went BANG, one by one they popped down onto the floor.

The rest of the children held up their fingers to represent the sausages, rubbed their hands together when they sizzled and clapped when the sausage went BANG, all the while chanting …

5 fat sausages sizzling in a pan.

All of a sudden

One went BANG!

4 fat sausages sizzling in a pan.

All of a sudden

One went BANG!

3 fat sausages sizzling in a pan.

All of a sudden

One went BANG!

2 fat sausages sizzling in a pan.

All of a sudden

One went BANG!

1 fat sausages sizzling in a pan.

All of a sudden

It went BANG!

A little while later Donna noticed the children outside had devised their own take on the chant – increasing it to seven fat sausages.

While they chanted and acted it out, they jumped from the long wooden plank onto the big blue mat each time a sausage went BANG!

Not only did they show great language, and memory recall …

of something they had newly learned …

their turn taking was mastered beautifully and the maths involved was brilliant.

Increasing the number in the song from 5 to 7 …

jumping off the plank one at a time, in order from left to right…

and counting backwards from seven to zero was all very impressive.

Play based learning at it’s very best.

Now that’s what we’re talking about!

We are very lucky! One of our colleagues, Karen, who works at a centre in Rowville, contacted us and asked if we’d like to have have a new born lamb visit our children.

Naturally we said “Yes please!”, made a date and out came Karen and Lou Lou, who was by then three weeks old.

Our children were enthralled at seeing this beautiful creature walking around on the end of a lead …

and lined up to have a turn of showing Lou Lou our yard.

As Lou Lou was very hungry by that stage …

everyone got to have a go at feeding her with a bottle.

They had to be very quick at passing the bottle along …

as Lou Lou is a very fast drinker.

The children couldn’t stop giggling at the sight of a very long lamb’s tail wiggling back and forth at a great rate of knots!

Lou Lou is very used to being handled by humans and loved being with the children.

Evidently at her own kinder she even enjoys jumping on the trampoline!

While Karen was with us we were discussing science experiments (as you do) and she told us that an experiment she loves to do with her children is about a polar bear who changes colour  – “The Magic Polar Bear”.

We thought  a good way of following up Lou Lou’s visit would be to change the story from being about a polar bear to being about a lamb instead. Here it is.

Lou Lou the Lamb

Place a glass jar filled with water on a table.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful white lamb who visited St John’s Kindergarten. Now this kindergarten was filled with many boys and girls and their teachers, Sherry and Donna.

Some of those children were named Alannah, Aydan and Katie, and they had beautiful golden hair. On the day Lou Lou visited the kindergarten, she wished she had golden hair like the children. She shut her eyes tightly and wished very hard for golden hair.

Put 2 drops of yellow food colouring in bottle.

AMAZING! A GOLDEN lamb — oh, my goodness! Do you think she was supposed to be a golden lamb?

Ask the children to slap, slap, clap, clap, and snap and say:

LOU LOU LAMB

YOU ARE A SIGHT!

YOUR COLOR WAS RIGHT

WHEN YOU WERE WHITE!

Lou Lou stopped and thought about her new colour! She thought the children would like her new golden colour! She sat down with her head on her front feet and began to think about her problem.

Now, as Lou Lou rested, she saw a new colour. What did she see? As she raised her head and looked around, she saw lots of children in the playground. Ben wore a green hat, Indiana wore a green jumper, Lachlan wore green pants and Sophie had green boots. Guess what Jayden had in his pocket? He had a GREEN marble! Lou Lou thought GREEN must be the most beautiful colour in the world! Maybe she should be a green lamb. She shut her eyes and began to wish she was green.

Add 2 drops of blue.

Now she was a GREEN lamb!!

But the children said:

LOU LOU LAMB

YOU ARE A SIGHT!

YOUR COLOR WAS RIGHT

WHEN YOU WERE WHITE!

Now this made Lou Lou feel sad. She went home to the farm for lunch and saw her friend Flicka who is a beautiful brown horse. Lou Lou Lamb thought that maybe the children would like her if she were brown instead.

Add 2 drops of red.

Now she was a BROWN lamb!!

But when she went back to kinder the children said:

LOU LOU LAMB

YOU ARE A SIGHT!

YOUR COLOR WAS RIGHT

WHEN YOU WERE WHITE!

Now what was Lou Lou going to do? She was all brown, and the children were right, lambs are white, not golden, green or brown. Sherry and Donna could see that Lou Lou was unhappy so suggested to the children that perhaps they could wash away the brown colour.
They found a tub of nice warm water and gently rubbed her down. Slowly the brown colour was washed off Lou Lou.

Teacher bleaches the water …

and slowly over the next little while…

once again …

she was a white lamb!!

Children chant:

LOU LOU LAMB

YOUR COLOUR IS RIGHT!

WE LOVE YOU!

WE LOVE YOU!

YOU ARE WHITE!

Lou Lou decided NEVER to change her colour again. After all, lambs are supposed to be WHITE, RIGHT?

At this early stage of the year, we seem to have a bit of a focus on colours, such as our colour matching game in one of our recent posts. A great large group game the children enjoy playing is called “This my spot”.

Each child sits behind a spot of their choice. We used four colours: red, blue green and yellow.

Together we hit our spots chanting,

“This is my spot, my spot, my spot.

This is my spot, my spot, my spot.”

Then repeat.

Simple, but fun and even our reluctant boys do this with gusto!

The teacher chooses a colour and the children with that spot stand up and do an action: green spots clapped hands three times .

Those children sit back down and we all chant the rhyme again. The next colour is chosen and the children with that spot stand up for their turn: yellow spots patted their head three times .

In between each colour we sit down and repeat the song: blue spots turned around three times .

This is repeated until all colours have been selected to do a different action: red spots did three star jumps!

We round it off by chanting one last time, then all colours are selected to stand up and put all actions together.

At the end of the game we sing the colours to be returned to the basket. Great colour recognition, counting, and turn taking.

::: make it irresistible

The children really enjoy repeating new songs and games, so as a follow up the next day when we played ‘this is my spot,’ as we selected colours to stand up, we invited one child from each colour group to choose the action their colour would do, as well as how many times they would do it. The children came up with some terrific actions – red spots did 4 star jumps, blue spots did 5 wiggles, green spots did 6 hand claps and yellow spots did 5 hand rolls.

The children take great pride in making simple decisions like choosing an action to perform and as we’ve often said before, they usually come up with the best ideas … after all … 5 wiggles … how devine is that!