Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

We have been singing a number of songs over the past few weeks in which the children have to echo song lines. For example our cuckoo songs we posted about on Thursday.

Other popular echo songs we’ve been enjoying are on the ‘Feeling the beat‘ and ’Echo Fred‘  CD’s by Kids Music Company.

We took the opportunity to ask the children if they knew what an echo was. A few of them related an echo to repeating song words (too cute) while others described it as “when you call out really loud and you can hear your voice over and over again”!

We have a large plastic barrel which we usually have outside that the children enjoy using as a hiding place or to roll each other around the yard in.

Last week when it was really wet, we brought the barrel inside so we could have some experimental fun with echos. We explained to the children how an echo happens when sound waves travel through the air and bounce off solid objects but they were still a little puzzled as to how our plastic barrel was going to make echos.

Naturally the children expected they would have to YEEEEELL into the barrel to get an any kind of an echo …

so they were quite fascinated, and we were relieved, to learn that they didn’t  …

in fact hearing their whispers so clearly was very interesting for all of us.

Even a soft clap outside the barrel sounded extremely loud inside!

Our echo chamber was the source of great interest to the children for most of the morning …

until this happened …

then this …

and this!

Because as an echo chamber  …

it still makes a great hiding place!

Come visit us and many more inspiring ideas at the

‘childhood 101′

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!

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!