Pop up basketball play in kindergarten

“Let’s play basketball” someone said… And so, kindergarten kids just constructed a pop up basket from used tires!

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They arranged by themselves a shooting order and patiently waited for their turn. They were little puzzled about how to get the ball out of this basket and needed to come up with some original solutions.

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Through this spontaneous yard play, kindergarten children accomplished a bunch of educational milestones by themselves, just being based on pleasure and joy! Priceless….

(by Ioanna Eleftheriou & Stavroula Gaoutsi, teachers in our Athens kindergarten)

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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

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!! 🙂 )

Visiting the historical National Library of Greece, just before its relocation after 114 years

In our play-based school, we always look for opportunities to mingle with fascinating reality.

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A coming cornerstone for Athens, our city, is the relocation of National Library of Greece and of Greek National Opera to the very new and impressive SNF Cultural Center, near city’s coast.

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Since 1903, National Library of Greece has been located into a historical building in the very heart of the city, designed by Theofilos Hansen and constructed by the great Ernst Ziller.  This status-quo will end by September 2016, so these days it was really the very last chance for our pre-K and summer campus kids (kindergarteners & alumni) to visit it.

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Children of both classes have been working lately in a variety of projects on sea and volcanoes. So, it was a great opportunity for kids to visit the old building and utilize library services in their research, getting thus a good idea on why we need libraries!

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Library policies are tough and usually do not allow hosting preschoolers, but our fantastic kids proudly made it!

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Children searched their subjects in library computers….

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….identified the needed sources….

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…and copied all information needed.

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All in all, it was a fantastic day for our kids. They grasped a lifetime experience, just days before it become a gone-for-good memory!

(big thanks to Library staff Ms. Vasiliki Tsigkouni, Tonia Pateropoulou and Agathi Papamichael, for their assistance.)

A real firefighting project in kindergarten

In September 2016, our kindergarten kids participated into a real-life firefighting exercise organized by the officers of Athens 1st Firefighting Station.

It was a fantastic chance for them to be parts of real fire department team, to learn important things on safety and to see how a team works in real life conditions.

Many thanks to our friends in Athens Fire Department!