Tag Archives: literacy

Anyone for Ice cream? The Power of Role Play in Children’s Learning

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Some of the children in St. Anne’s room have been observed engaging in a variety of shop role play. We noticed that outside Charlotte transported items to set up her own shop. At the playdough table Charlie, Lexi and Olivia made cupcakes and offered them for sale. Tesi stood at the door of the light room and called out to the main room, “Ice cream, ice cream for sale”. Ojasvi and Mischka climbed up a step so they were higher than the other children around them and called out, “Ice cream”, in unison. This play has not been limited to ice cream, it’s also been sandwiches and with Lorenzo: chocolate cake.

As the educators reflected on this play we decided to set up a role play shop for the children. We placed it outside as that was where the majority of the shop play was observed. However, we wonder whether the play is about shops, buying, selling and re-enacting their own experiences or whether it is a vehicle for something else, like connection.

Role play or pretend play is thought to be imaginative and fun but it also has much learning value. During role play children learn about themselves and the world, they may act out new learning, their fears, interests or dislikes. For example, how often in children’s dramatic hospital play do we see them giving each other vaccinations? Children are acting out an experience that they may not understand or find scary. They do this in a safe environment where they can explore their feelings and make sense of the world.

Shop role play has many opportunities for learning, such as; sorting food into groups with similar attributes, mathematically organising food in spatial arrangements, calculating the cost of food, communicating verbally and through writing, exploring shapes and weights, collaboration and so on.

The Early Years Learning Framework informs our curriculum. It states “Children develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities and an understanding of the reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary for active community participation”. We wonder if this is what are children are trying to achieve by building on their own social experiences, negotiating roles and inviting reciprocal play?

These observations also link with our philosophy, “We will engage in projects, both internally and externally, that build on the learning of educators and foster new understandings of the ways in which children learn and grow in their early years.”

Here are some photos of our first observations of the children engaged in our role play shop. We will reflect on these and keep you informed as we attempt to interpret the learning. We would love to hear your thoughts.

Schemas and learning through play and exploration

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Schemas are described as patterns of behaviour which allow children to explore and express developing ideas and thoughts through play and exploration. The repetitive action of schematic play allow children to construct meaning in what they are doing.

Children learn best through opportunities to engage in active learning through hands on experiences. These opportunities allow children to problem solve, question, predict, explore, hypothesise, imagine and develop independent choices and decisions.

Children use play to develop understandings through their senes and movements as they interact with their environment, teachers, peers and resources.  Therefore, we carefully curate our learning environments to provide children with many opportunities to interact with a wide variety of materials and tools. We also support children’s schematic play patterns by building on children’s interests to engage in deep and sustained learning experiences.

The most common types of schema include:

  • Trajectory
  • Rotation
  • Enclosing
  • Enveloping
  • Transporting
  • Connecting
  • Positioning
  • Orientation

Over the past weeks, teachers and educators have observed children’s transporting schemas. This includes moving items from place to place, carrying objects in their hands, pockets or filling containers and buckets with collected objects and moving them to other places in our ELC. There has also been in a special interest in water play, filling buckets and containers with water and moving them around the centre.

This week we have provided children with items of varied shape, size and capacity including measuring jugs, cups, yoghurt and milk containers and spoons as well as different tubs and trays of water.

The children have been filling containers and transferring water to other containers or tubs of water. Through this experience, children have been building on and developing many skills and strategies.

This includes numeracy skills and demonstrating an understanding of measurement. Specifically, capacity and how containers can hold different amounts. Children have also been observed growing their mathematical vocabulary, using words such as fully, empty, overflowing, little, big and comparative language such as more than.

Alexander was observed pouring water from a jug into a container.

Alexander: “It filled up”

Nicole (teacher): “It’s overflowing now. Water is going over the top of the container”.

Alexander: “But I still got some left” (indicating that water was still remaining in the jug, despite the container being full).

Children have developed their social skills, too. Tavae and Henry worked collaboratively, taking it in turns to hold the container whilst the other poured water into it.

 

 

 

 

Our Week of Learning – Literacy and Numeracy

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We believe children have the right to be supported in their learning in all areas of their development –  physically, cognitively, emotionally, socially and spiritually. We see children’s learning as integrated and connected. Learning is a social practice and through interactions and play experiences children develop their literacy and numeracy skills.

This week we have observed many examples of children’s literacy and numeracy understandings. We will use these observations to plan and program provocations to build and grow our children’s literacy and numeracy.

We do this with the support of the Government of South Australia Department for Education and Child Development Indicators for Literacy and Numeracy in Pre-School. The indicators have been developed to support teachers to extend and enrich every preschool child’s numeracy and literacy learning.

NUMERACY

Indicator: ‘I analyse, read and organise the data in my world’

One of our provocations this week was a table of different seeds and beans for the children to explore. Initially designed as a sensory experience, it also emerged as a wonderful numeracy activity. The bowls of beans and seeds got mixed up over the week and the children began to sort them.

Will

Will: I put the black ones in this bowl

Nicole: Why only black ones?

Will: So they not all mixed up. I’m still working on these.

Nicole: What if I put these in this bowl?  If I put these in here what else would you add?

Will:  Just those ones

Arabella

Indicator: ‘I analyse, read and organise the data in my world’

Arabella joined Will at the sorting table. She had some white beans and put them all in a bowl.

Nicole picked up an orange lentil and asked if Arabella if she would put that in the bowl with the white beans . Arabella said ‘no it’s not white’.

Shruti and Aicha

Indicator: ‘I analyse, read and organise the data in my world’

Nicole: The seeds got all mixed up and now we have to sort them out.

Shruti starts putting some seeds in a bowl.

Nicole: Why are you putting those in there Shruti?

Shruti: These are white

Aicha: I’m putting the white inside

Nicole: What about this bowl?

Aicha:   Black

Nicole: And this bowl is empty, are there any seeds you could put in here?

Aicha:  Orange ones.

Aicha: Look how many I have

Nicole: How many are there?

Aicha started counting. She counted to 13. We counted together demonstrating 1 to 1 correspondence. There were 18 seeds.

Tesi and Arielle

Indicator: ‘I quantify my world’

During outdoor play, Tesi asked for a little basket so she could collect ‘treasure’ Her and Arielle wandered through the yard collecting natural items from the gardens.

Tesi: Look Nicole, this is our first treasure.

Arielle: the second…. more treasure.

Nicole: How many have you found?

Arielle: 2

Tesi:  Let’s find some other…. look treasure.

Arielle:  It’s too big.

Nicole: Let’s look at our treasure.

Tesi: There’s bark and rock

Nicole: How many do you have?

Tesi:  1…2…3…4…5

Nicole: How many pieces of bark do you have?

Arielle: 4

Tesi: And 1 rock. 4 and 1 makes 5.

Tesi: Nicole look more treasure; a leaf

Nicole: A big leaf

Will, Tavae and Tesi

Indicator: “I measure and compare my world”

Indicator: “I quantify my world”

In a patch of our garden, will found a number of feathers of different colours, sizes and textures. Tavae and Tesi were intrigued and together they all collected some of the feathers in a bowl.

Will: There was an emu here

Tavae: I found one. Oh! it’s not going on my hand .

Will: There’s a lot of feathers Tesi. I’m just collecting them.

Tesi: I got one Nicole. It was there. Hey look! Feather!

Will: Guys an emu has maybe been here because these feathers are bigger. Got any more feathers? I been selecting them.

Nicole: How do you think the feathers got here?

Tesi: The birds.

Tesi: I think bird has wings and they can flap their wings and fly.

Aicha: They came from up that tree and then came here.

Will: I don’t know how it got here. They came in the night and I wasn’t here. Maybe the wind got strong and it got colder and the feathers blew off.

Tavae: I think the bird got died.

Arielle: The birds died.

Tarun

Indicator: “I quantify my world”

Tarun spent time matching the number stones to the number cards.

 

Tavae

Indicator: ” I explore and understand my place and space in the world”.

Tavae is very interested in turtles and loves caring for our turtle, ‘Strawberry’. He was drawn to the turtle puzzle and concentrated and persisted for a long time to complete the challenging puzzle. He flipped and rotated puzzle pieces to fit them together.

Tavae: You help me Nicole.

Nicole: You have a go and do the pieces you can and then I will help you if you need me.

Tavae: Look Nicole this big one it go here see? And this one? 

Nicole: What do you think Tavae?

Tavae: I can’t do this.

Nicole:  Let’s try this.

Tavae:  Oh look it does work.

Nicole: Oh but there’s a little gap, they all need to fit together remember.

Tavae:  Hmmm I think this one goes this way, no that way. No. Hey look! It goes this way.

LITERACY

Tesi

Indicator: “I represent my world symbolically”.

Tesi has been learning to write her name. Tesi knows the different letters of her name and can write some of the letters. To scaffold the process of writing her name, we have been using tracing dots to form the letters. Tesi is now drawing the  tracing dots herself to support herself in writing the letters.

Arielle

Indicator: “I engage with texts and make meaning”.

Arielle: I made a book

Nicole: How wonderful! Tell me more about your book.

Arielle: I use the paper to make the book. The book is about me and Tesi.

 

 

 

 

Shared Reading

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This week, we have been reading the following books related to children’s interests in birds and their lifecycles. The children have enjoyed listening to the stories and engaging in discussions about the story’s plot and characters.

 

EARLY YEARS LEARNING OUTCOME

OUTCOME 5: Children are effective communicators

 

  • Children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts