How do they learn?

One of the questions asked about play based preschools is: How/what do they learn? And the short answer is everything in every way. Although, I admit, it is harder to pinpoint the exact learning because we are so used to only the measurable skills being defined as learning. Like, how high can they count or what letters they know. To really see the benefit from play based learning, we need to expand our notion of learning to include things that, by nature, cannot be measured by tests, like critical thinking or social-emotional skills. So here are some things we were working on this week.

STEM/Engineering:

Race Track-Making changes on the race track to see how it affects how the cars go down. And setting up the spectator section so everyone gets a good view 🙂

Legos-Just look at that building. Not many engineers can make a floating bridge like that!

Literacy:

Writing-I have a little boy this year that kinda likes Pokemon. He is motivated to write as he makes his own Pokemon cards. I didn’t get a picture of when he called me over to help him make the giant Pokemon card. He needed help in making the k, e, m and the n. He is not writing letters because we were studying that letter this week and had to fill in a worksheet about it. By following his lead, the learning will be longer lasting. As you see from the last picture, I do put out literacy activities, but the children are always free to choose them and free to individualize them to fit their needs. Also happening this week was a little girl becoming the teacher, mimicking what I do at circle time as we high-light the letters of the alphabet each week. She had a group of children sitting in a circle around her as she held up each letter and told the “class” what it was. Again, more lasting then when I do it because it had meaning to her.

Small motor:

I use to try to engineer cutting activities so that the students could learn how to cut. I’d set out worksheets that they had to cut things out off, making sure they were holding the scissors correctly. Then I realized that wasn’t necessary. I have come to the conclusion that children love to cut and they will discover the best way to hold the scissors when they have the sufficient small motor muscles to do so.  This little boy was motivated to cut because he wanted to cut out the dinosaur he drew,  he ended up cutting out several dinosaurs. At the other end of the table I have the achoo plates set out (we are talking about covering our mouths when we sneeze). Years past I would dominate this project by both tracing and cutting out the hands. But, finally realizing what the students are capable of, I turned it over to them. And the results are amazing. I wish I got more pictures of the “hands” that were done. They were very unique, to say the least 🙂

 

Social:

I could write pages about this one. But I just wanted to highlight this group of friends. As far as I can remember, this particular group has never engaged in play together before. So it was great to watch how they meshed their individual play together into a great new game (which I believe was some sort of hair cutting at this point of their play). This group lasted the better part of the play time, which doesn’t always happen at this age. More often then not, the game plays itself out and the members disband and go on to new games. The best thing about a play based preschool, is that the games have a chance to come to an end because the children are done, not because the teacher says it’s time to move on.

This is just a snippet of what goes on during the week. But needless to say, there is a lot of learning going on.