If you want to be a doctor, first thing you have to do is to learn about the human body.
What’ s a better way than experimenting on your friends, during kindergarten English class?
Have their heart, ears, mouth, legs and arms checked!
(by Claire Hadjinikolaou, English teacher in Athens school)
One of everyone’s chlidhood favorite games is definitely blind man’s buff.
All of us have funny stories on wrong identifications to tell and all of us still clearly remember our intense feelings at the moment of blindfolding, when the game was starting.
Same with very young kids: this process is especially well taken by them. There is great anticipation on who will take the place of the next “blind man”.
But why is this so important from educational point of view?
So, shall we play?
(by Chryssa Vaitsi, teacher in post-toddlers class, in Athens)
We spent the whole week preparing our fairy tea party which took place on Thursday and Friday in the woods. After reading in school the legend of the rainbow fairies, we decided to help these little fairies make a rainbow.
In school, we put on the wings we made out of hangers and rope and practiced how to use the fairy dust and learnt a few spells! We mixed paints, just to find out that we only need three colors to make so many more.
We even tried to make our colors shine by sprinkling some fairy dust on them.
The result was to make everything around us shine bright, including ourselves!
On Thursday and Friday, we had a wonderful day in the woods!
We looked around for some fairy signs and while looking we found some acorns instead and a little tortoise wandering around.
We built our fairy welcome houses in the trees and decorated them the way we wanted.
Then, we went hunting for colors.
And used what we found to make a rainbow.
And after all this hard work, we set the table and had a cup of tea and biscuits!
(by Claire Hadjinikolaou, English teacher in Dorothy Snot, Athens)
Learning occurring through play based on real life situations, is in the core of life-derived learning. Here is a perfect example:
Kindergarten kids visited a fashion house specializing in wedding gowns! They were excited (ok, it goes more for the girls!) and coming back in school decided to perform a wedding!
Teacher Chryssa was convinced to be the bride, so play started! (FYI, they took it up to the end!! 🙂 )
During 2016 summer party, post-toddlers walk like the robot they made in class, Mr. Roboto!
Pre-K children become sculptors and turn their friends into living sculptures! Afterwards, each of them explains in class what created, and how…
(by Spyridoula Patouna, teacher in pre-K class, in Athens)
One day in babies’ class, “Frogy” the frog paid a visit, reading us the book ‘’Frogy is getting dressed’’!
Children were very happy to see and listen to him and decided that they want to get dressed like Frogy!
We opened the box and took out all clothes we had. Hats, scarves, bags, shirts, shoes…Every kid chose what he or she liked and put it on. Some of them even posed for a picture!
We all then helped Frogy to get dressed. Kids worked so patiently and used their imagination in order to put on him as many clothes as they could!
And when finished, we hugged our friend and we went for a walk in the yard, all dressed up!
(by Maria Gryllaki, teacher in babies’ class in Athens)
Life-derived Learning 