The Evolution of Play

I never know how our curriculum is going to evolve but in the last two weeks the children have decided on a few things:

1.) The Iphone is awesome and it must become a part of our everyday reflective thinking practice.

2.) Communication both verbal and nonverbal needs some work so we’re going to focus on that.

3.) Mirrors, reflective surfaces, and 3 dimensional shapes are fascinating at the moment so we must explore more!

4.) Water is mesmerizing, soothing and a great way to ease tension if the group is feeling a little tweaky or someone is missing mommy.

So there we have it, the meat and potatoes of what we will be working on for at least the next couple of weeks, we will see where this takes us! 

At the beginning of the week one of our many projects was foam / paper shapes at the easel. My intention in setting it up was to give my new kids an ice breaker and a familiar diversion from missing mommy as she left for work. I was also hoping that bringing all the kids together in close proximity would spark some conversations and collaborative work so friendships could begin to emerge. Truthfully I didn’t expect too much more than a few fleeting moments through out the day at the easel but the kids worked on it for hours over over a three day period. 

Our first invitation to play was a bowl of foam shapes, some paper squares, plastic tabs and two salvaged strips of black trim used in office buildings - sticky side up clamped to the easel. The foam shapes have been around forever but the are so difficult for the kids to peel that they tend to get used for other things. 

On the second side of the easel I hung some regular paper to keep the kids from getting stickers everywhere. Some of the kids decided to peel the stickers and a trend started. Many of the children were not able to peel the stickers so they went to Sam to ask for help. Sam patiently demonstrated over and over again how to peel the backs off the stickers. They watched him carefully and figured it out too. Sam LOVES to peel things so he helped the younger children a lot.

Lots of giggles, peeking and chasing games started. Some disagreements about sharing materials and space were discussed and resolved.