Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

As the children are just settling in to the new year, we like to sing old familiar songs which the children are comfortable with, but with a twist so they feel a bit more ‘grown up’. An example is the well known favourite, “Heads, shoulders, knees and toes”.

This is the way we sing it with a jazzier tune than the regular one:

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes,

knees and toes.

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes,

knees and toes

and eyes and ears and mouth and nose.

Heads, shoulder, knees and toes, knees and toes.

We sing it through as it should be, then each time after that we touch all body parts mentioned in the song but one by one leave out their names.

….. , shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes etc

….. , ………, knees and toes, knees and toes etc.

….. , ……… , …..  and toes, ….. and toes etc.

….. , ……… , …..  … …., ….. … …. etc.

In the end, the whole song is totally quiet with us all just moving our hands up and down our bodies. We find the children are very proud of themselves when they can do this altogether and without prompting from the teachers.

Most years as a follow up to our Wild Action incursion, we take the children to the Healesville Sanctuary on an excursion. It is a wonderful place to see and learn about our unique Australian animals.

One year we bought a set of Aussie animals from the Sanctuary shop and we pop them into all sorts of imaginary play areas, sometimes by themselves and sometimes with other creatures. Here we have used sand as a basis. The sand is great as it can be dry as we have it here, or wet so that the children can sculpt it however they like. Add a few logs, plants and rocks and there you have it!

In keeping with our current interest in Australian animals we taught the children a new version (one we made up ourselves) of an old favorite song.

The original is:

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,

merry, merry king of the bush is he.

Laugh kookaburra laugh kookaburra,

Gay your life must be!

Our new version sung to the same tune is:

Crocodile sits in the muddy swamp,

Eating all the children – chomp, chomp, chomp.

Snap crocodile snap crocodile,

Chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp!

The other day one of our kinder children asked if we could get “The old lady who ate all the animals” down from the shelf.

We have the funniest cloth doll depicting the old lady who swallowed the fly, complete with all the insects and animals which go with her story.

The children really enjoy drama, so a small group of children soon gathered around and Donna explained the story to them. It was delightful to see the children’s faces as they realized the impossible task which lay ahead for the old lady!

Each of the children then chose a character to feed her ; fly, spider, bird, cat, dog, goat, cow and a horse of course!

Donna sang the story to the children, as this was how she learnt it as a young girl. Each child waited with anticipation for their turn to feed the old woman, taking great delight in stuffing their insect or animal into her mouth and pushing it well down into her belly!

After several groups of children had taken part in acting out the story with Donna, she brought out the book of the same title and the children helped her to read the story aloud.

The children then went on to ‘read’ the story from the book themselves and using the puppet they continued to act out the story over and over again.

.

Some of the children even sang the story!

Helping each other out and following the pictures in the book, they had memorised the story really well and between them they didn’t miss a line.

It was delightful co-operative fun, incorporating great language, literacy, music and drama as well as numeracy and imaginary play … perfect play based learning!

Of course if you don’t have an old lady puppet, any hand puppet could be used in her place, even a sock puppet would work really well, and any number of different types of animals could be substituted for the characters she ate.

Older children could make up their own characters and lyrics … they don’t have to rhyme … they could draw pictures and write down their stories and make a book. Perhaps they could even go so far as to make their own puppet and characters!

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a bird … How absurd to swallow a bird!

She swallowed the bird to catch the spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a cat … Fancy that, she swallowed a cat!

She swallowed the cat to catch the bird … She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a dog … what a hog to swallow a dog!

She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, she swallowed the cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a goat … what a joke to swallow a goat!

She swallowed the goat to catch the dog, she swallowed the dog to catch the cat, she swallowed the cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a cow … I don’t know how she swallowed a cow!

She swallowed the cow to catch the goat, she swallowed the goat to catch the dog, she swallowed the dog to catch the cat, she swallowed the cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider … which wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her … She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly … perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a horse … she’s dead of course!