The children very much enjoyed last week’s ping pong ball painting, moving the balls with straws, but if you remember …
they struggled to blow them when covered in paint. So we decided to let them have some blowing practice combined with some healthy competition.
We set up a table (the old faithful with the edge around it) with a race track, straws and cottonwool balls. The idea was to race the balls to the end only using blowing power.
Mostly two children would wander over and have a go … rarely did one want to have a shot by themselves.
A couple of children were keen to race ping pong balls but they kept crossing over into each others lane, so we set up some blocks to divide the table.
Now that was a lot of fun … and very challenging!
Then, the children moved the blocks around to make an obstacle course … more challenging still!
Three boys moved the blocks to create their own game which involved bouncing a ping pong ball over the blocks to score goals by landing in Joshua’s hat …
and score goals they did … nice shot Ben!
Next we used Teacher Tom‘s idea and set up a maze.
The wonderful shapes of the blocks meant we could create walls, gates and arches for the balls to travel through.
Some children used straws to blow the balls through the course as well as using them like mini golf clubs …
while others scavenged small pieces of dowel from the invention table to use as mini bats.
The children challenge each other to move the balls all the way through the course to the black ‘finish’ dot!
By the end of the day however …
the maze had … run it’s course … and taken a new direction altogether!
We noticed the balls still featured in the new play … then again with all those lovely round shapes to play with why would they not!
When our pre-kinder children arrived the next morning we set up a simpler maze for them to follow…
and using the dowel rods as bats, they had just as much fun and enjoyed the challenge as much as the older children did.
And like the older children, they too enjoying moving the blocks around to create new paths to follow!
::: This very simple activity provided many wonderful opportunities to lay down the foundations for some very important and valuable life skills for our children today … it’s true … it did! Apart from physical development these included: verbal and physical communication, sharing (space, time and equipment), turn taking, teamwork, co-operation, negotiating skills, hand eye co-ordination, patience, language (including positional language) and imagination all the while covering maths, science and literature … all through play … and all in kindergarten!
So next time your child comes home empty handed, don’t say “didn’t you do anything today” because chances are, they did a heap, but all they know is that they played … they don’t yet realize how much they learned while they played … they simply played. And that is how it is … and that is how it should be … and that is play based learning!
Be sure to visit Teacher Tom at http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com or through his link on the left hand side of the page.
