We’ve made it through our first week of school and the children had many opportunities to play and learn. I have had also had many opportunities to learn while observing and interacting with my new friends. I was able to learn about the children’s personalities, their preferences, their previous experiences with different learning tools and about their interaction abilities with other children and adults.
My plan was to capture many pictures during the week, but I ended up being so involved in the play that I often forgot! I did manage to take a few photos that you can see below.
Learning through Play Photos
Magnetic Letters
I provided magnetic letters to see if anyone would try spelling their name. I few children explored the letters in that way and the photos below show other explorations – sorting by colour and attempting to create the alphabet.
Lego
Lego was popular during the week. Some children preferred the regular sized pieces and others preferred the duplo sized pieces. A few also enjoyed combining the sizes. The stories that accompanied their creations varied from houses, to neighbourhoods to defense towers.
Blocks
Blocks offer so many learning experiences. This week I observed motor skill practice as the children manipulated and placed each block. I observed problem solving and planning as intended designs failed to stay balanced and most importantly, the children were able to practice social and language skills as they worked together on projects.
Other Learning Experiences
I purposefully don’t include play food in our kitchen area. Instead I include a collection of loose parts. I find that the open-ended resources allow children to use their imagination as they decide what the loose part is representing – this often allows them to tell me about the food they have in their home that may not have happened if I only provided traditional play food.
The next two photos show individual learning. The Buddha board is a classroom favourite – this allows for mark making and the delight in having the marks fade back to the original board colour. The second is the classic classroom cubes. Some children explore them by making long trains, other create a spinning type of toy and this young learner demonstrated her counting and sequencing to me (she explained to me that the last row is the rainbow of all the colours).
I am excited to see how the students continue to learn through play in the upcoming weeks!
Happy Teaching and Learning,
Lynda
Did you see the last blog on our classroom set-up – if not, take a look
