Irresistible Ideas for play based learning

Quite a few of our families are heading off for holidays at the moment, mostly to sunny spots such as Fiji or Queensland. As the children’s interest in snails hasn’t waned, we asked them what sort of holiday a snail would have considering they move so slowly. The sorts of ideas the children came up with were “The next plant” or “The next door neighbours”.

We asked them to think about what sort of holiday they would like to go on if they were snails and they came up with some great destination ideas like; the moon, the supermarket, Queensland, Fairyland, the beach, the footy and the city!

They drew their snails, …

… some drew their holiday destination too.

Then an adult wrote the holiday story out for them …

… if they couldn’t do it themselves.

One child who wrote his own said, “I wanted my snail to go to the circus, but I didn’t know the word. Then I thought he could go to church, but I didn’t know the word, so he is going to the farm because I DID know that word!“

At the end of each session the children read out their own stories to the others.

Then we made their stories into books …

…  for everyone to enjoy.

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!