is this play?

Risky Play

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Toddlers class (2-3 y.o.) is usually the point in time for children to start experimenting physically. They feel strong now and ready to take risks.

Here, risky play gets into the picture. Of course, we do not encourage children in school to jump out of the windows! But, on the other hand, we do not either overprotect them when  seem ready and confident to take the extra mile…

Watch Dimitris in the following video, to consciously explore how it feels to fell!

(video by Jenny Diamantopoulou, teacher in toddlers’ class in Athens)

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Creating sensory bags in babies’ class

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Babies enjoy playing with small pasta pieces, at the sensory table. However, they thought that the light yellow color of the pasta is a little dull and wanted to change it. But the question was, “how”?

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First, we picked our favorite liquid color and dropped it into little bags, together with the pasta pieces. To have a big success, we dropped a looooot of color!

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Then, we shook the bags. Babies observed that pasta pieces soon started to disappear! Babies tried then to identify the new content of the bags, by using all their senses.

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The colorful pasta bags were magically transformed into our new “sensory bags”! A new toy that we added in our class play equipment.

A toy, made by babies themselves!

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(by Maria Gryllaki, teacher in babies’ class in Athens)

Dorothy Snot sent us a postcard!

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During the first days of school this year, children in pre-K class read the book “The disappearance of Dorothy Snot”, the book out of which our school was named of!

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As the story was moving on, Dorothy started sending letters to the children. Green envelops began to appear in class, very often. Dorothy was asking for help and ideas.

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In one of her letters, she sent us some photos of her last trips around the world and asked for our imagination: Was it possible for us to construct with those images by using toys and other materials?

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Children thought of it, worked together, and responded to Dorothy’s request with great success!

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(by Spyridoula Patouna, teacher in pre-K class in Athens)

Play in toddlers’ class

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Play, is:

  • Two painter balls in a box

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  • Building towers using glasses

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  • Meeting your friends under the table

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  • Wearing strange metal shoes

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  • Wiping the salt

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  • Playing music

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  • Inventing a way to reach the balloons up in the ceiling

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  • Spreading the clothes

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  • Talking with your best friend

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  • And after all these exhausting things, go to sleep!

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Play is life. Children’s life.

(by Jenny Diamantopoulou, teacher in toddlers’ class in Athens)

Shall we play?

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One of everyone’s chlidhood favorite games is definitely blind man’s buff.

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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.

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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”.

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But why is this so important from educational point of view?

  • Because they play and have fun
  • Because they strenghthen their bonds and relationships
  • Because interaction with each other is enhanced

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  • Because they develop orientation skills
  • Because they enhance their optical memory
  • Because they learn in practice what “drama” means
  • Because they constantly ask to repeat the process

So, shall we play?

(by Chryssa Vaitsi, teacher in post-toddlers class, in Athens)

International Fairy Tea Party 2016

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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.

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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.

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We even tried to make our colors shine by sprinkling some fairy dust on them.

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The result was to make everything around us shine bright, including ourselves!

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On Thursday and Friday, we had a wonderful day in the woods!

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We looked around for some fairy signs and while looking we found some acorns instead and a little tortoise wandering around.

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We built our fairy welcome houses in the trees and decorated them the way we wanted.

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Then, we went hunting for colors.

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And used what we found to make a rainbow.

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And after all this hard work, we set the table and had a cup of tea and biscuits!

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(by Claire Hadjinikolaou, English teacher in Dorothy Snot, Athens)

Marrying Teacher Chryssa

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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!! 🙂 )