Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

Each year term three is celebrated with our “star of the week program“.  What has become a traditional part of the program due to popular demand is the drawing of the children’s silhouettes . We have had a number of enquiries from people wanting to know how they are made and as we only do them in third term you’ve had to wait this long to find out! Well now we have started creating them again we can share with you how they are done.

We place a piece of easel paper on the wall and have the child stand right up against the paper with their head touching the wall. This helps them to stay very still!

At this stage we take a photo of the child ensuring we use the flash and show it to them through the camera so they can see their shadow and better understand what we are going to draw around. Shining the lamp on their face, and do be careful not to use a high wattage globe as the lamp will get too warm, we encourage the child to stand as still as a statue …

and working as swiftly and as accurately as possible we trace around their shadow.

The rest of the process can be a little time consuming, so this is the ONE and ONLY time in the year that Donna takes work home!

Using a pen, hard pencil or stylus you need to transfer the outline onto black paper by tracing over it in a firm hand …

so you are able to clearly see the transferred outline.

Next, using a very sharp blade carefully follow the outline and cut it out. You really do need to be accurate here as any mistake can completely change the look of the child!

Now we simply glue in onto a piece of A3 size cover paper in the child’s choice of colour, add their name and photograph in the corner, this will help them to identify themselves which in silhouette form can be quite tricky for them, run it through the laminator and it’s all done.

We got the idea for the silhouettes from this one of Donna which her grade three teacher Mr. Fuller made back in 1970 … hee hee hee!

We like to display the silhouettes around the room until the end of the year when the children (and parents) proudly take them home. They really do make a lovely keepsake!

During third term at our kindergarten we run a program called “Star of the Week” where each child is a star for a week. They wear a star badge, have a special chair to sit in, have first choice at activities, talk all about themselves, do their favourite activity with a small group of children helped by one of their parents, and so on.

One of the highlights is that Donna draws around the shadow of their faces and cuts their silhouettes out of black paper. These are then mounted on coloured card of their choice, laminated and placed around the room for all to see and admire.

The interest shown by the children in how shadows are made, led onto the following activity.

shadows in the winter sun

We had been experiencing some quite miserable weather here in Melbourne, hence the mud play. One day, a weak, winter sun came out, enough to cast shadows on the ground.

We asked one of our children to make an interesting body shape and we drew around him.

Then he lay down on the shadow and the children could see how elongated it was compared to his actual size thanks to that low morning winter sun!

When the children came inside, some of them grabbed various objects from around the room and popped them onto the mat in a sunny spot to see what shadows they made as well.

This led to lots of experimentation from the children inside and out.

Outside they enjoyed drawing around each other’s shadows …

…as well as different play equipment.

We asked our young friend to stand in the same spot just before lunch time and again drew around his shadow. It was fascinating to see how far the sun had moved and what direction it went in just a few hours. His shadow had shortened considerably too, although it was still bigger than he was.

Over the next week or so this really took off and an exciting thing we found was that the children (generally a small group of boys) who are not usually interested in picking up a pencil or paint were doing all sorts of wonderful chalk drawings on the concrete!