And the Play Shows the Way

Sometimes, something happens during the month that inspires a blog post, and sometimes there is no such inspiration. That is what I thought about January’s post. But after looking through the pictures, I realize there is always something happening that is unexpected and amazing. But these kind of things often don’t lend themselves well to lots of words of explanation, so I am just going to let the pictures do the talking. Because it all comes down to the students taking ownership of their play/learning. I might add one or two explanations, but for the most part, here is a glimpse into child led learning.

Art:

Sensory Table: This month is some of my favorite sensory tables. I freeze plastic animals in ice and let the kids experiment to get them out. Another favorite is digging for dinosaur bones, but the paintbrushes can also be candles on a cake!

Building:

Easel: This is a fairly new addition to the preschool. I don’t know if I have set out the foam popsicle sticks before or not, but they are my new favorite thing. The creativity of the students were amazing. I don’t know if you can tell, but in the last pictures, the girls even stuck the plastic containers up!

Miscellaneous fun: There is a story behind the first picture. A little boy comes up to me and asks for water in the pan. Of course, my first reaction is no, you’ll have to just pretend there is water because we can’t take water into the toy room because of the carpet. Usually that is enough and the child goes off to play. But he asks again. So then I realize that he has some plans that are important to him so I need to find a way to make it work. I ask if he can use the water on the table and he says yes. So we get water in the pan and he gets to finish “cooking his meal”. The last picture shows how children will learn organically what I use to think I needed to teach them. I used to have a whole circle time about sorting. But here, a little girl showed me that all I need to do is provide the material and the students will take care of the rest. She sorted the ponies into a colors, without any prompting from me 🙂