Babies in preschool love playing with life-derived loose parts! Fantastic sensory play with messy stuff, assisting them to discover the world.
(by Maria Gryllaki, teacher in babies class in Athens)
life derived play
Creating sensory bags in babies’ class
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”?
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!
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.
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!
(by Maria Gryllaki, teacher in babies’ class in Athens)
Cornelius Crick sent us a letter
Cornelius Crick, the famous detective of our favorite book, sent pre-K class a letter! He was informed about our talent in solving problems and finding answers to mysteries…
Cornelius’ first request was to get to know us better. He asked for our portraits.
Children drew them with pleasure! But, just a wall full of our portraits was not enough.
Kids also wanted to add their names under their own portrait.
So,we played a game after which each paper obtained the right name, on it! 
We are now ready for the next Cornelius Crick’ challenge…
(by Spyridoyla Patouna, teacher in pre-K class in Athens)
There is a ghost in our school…
There’s a ghost in our school that spooks us all!
We’re making a scarecrow to scare it away…..
Getting ready for Halloween!
(by Claire Hadjinikolaou, English teacher in Athens school)
Play in toddlers’ class
Play, is:
- Two painter balls in a box
- Building towers using glasses
- Meeting your friends under the table
- Wearing strange metal shoes
- Wiping the salt
- Playing music
- Inventing a way to reach the balloons up in the ceiling
- Spreading the clothes
- Talking with your best friend
- And after all these exhausting things, go to sleep!
Play is life. Children’s life.
(by Jenny Diamantopoulou, teacher in toddlers’ class in Athens)
When I grow up, I want to be a ……
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)
The ball through the hoop
Shall we play?
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?
- Because they play and have fun
- Because they strenghthen their bonds and relationships
- Because interaction with each other is enhanced
- 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)
The magic behind setting up a play-based preschool
as presented in IPSEF, Dubai, on September 2016
Spotlight on John Yiannoudis, Co-Founder, Owner and Director of Dorothy Snot Pre-School
You are speaking at IPSEF Design and Build, what helped you decide to participate?
Middle East is a fast growing area in all aspects and IPSEF brings together powerful school people. We are a well-established play-based pre-school, currently evaluating the potential for international expansion of our concept.
UAE is a region we are mostly interested, so I thought speaking in IPSEF would be a great opportunity to present our education philosophy education in a broad audience and meet interesting people that could be potentially turned into valued partners.
Why did you get involved in Education?
I‘m a business guy and have spent almost 20 years working in top financial management positions of Greek enterprises. Five years ago I decided to exclusively work on developing our family preschool into a world class education business, mainly for two reasons:
a) education is an industry adding so much value in a society. It’s so much more self-fulfilling to assist in raising strong children, than to merely achieve some financial objectives for a bunch of private business shareholders.
b) business-wise, I understand education as an industry lacks entrepreneurship. Most school owners and directors have strong education background but rather weak business sense and strive to innovate, which prevents them from achieving the most out of their efforts. I believe I can assist into transforming our unique and very successful free education model into a world class leader, maintaining at the same time its exceptional educational aspects.
What are you currently working on?
The last five years we strengthened the position of our Dorothy Snot pre-school in Greece and developed a strong and exceptionally working education philosophy.
Beginning Fall 2016 and for the next five years, our effort will be to transform our Life-derived Learning concept on play based education, into a top class model for pre-schools & kindergartens and manage to expand our international presence.
What project would you have liked to work on?
I would have loved having been actively involved somehow into redesigning the education system of my country, Greece. I believe we have been doing it all wrong for the last decades and I’m sure I could be of great help. Of course, that means to be involved in politics, which is not either a short or a long term goal for me!
Who is your inspiration?
Out of the several people I could mention, both from business and education world, I will stick to my good friend and mentor Tom Hobson, the famous “Teacher Tom” from Seattle. He has been a constant source of inspiration to me, both on his writings and sayings on how to respect the will and enforce the freedom of very young children, in early education. I just love him!
What is the greatest challenge within your role?
My greatest daily challenge is to make sure that our school keeps progressing and innovating, without leaving behind our main goal: making sure that children are the real owners of their school life!
What 1 thing would improve your working life?
Having more human resources with a deep understanding of our philosophy and vision and thus being able to undertake serious parts of my daily administrative and business developing role. But, I’m working on that!
What 3 things do you see as being the focus of Middle East education over the next five years?
1. The effort of developing an education philosophy of its own, in all levels. A more tailor-made approach to the special needs and challenges of this fast growing area, maintaining at the same time a high quality level of services.
2. To remain capable of integrating effectively the constantly growing numbers of young population, both expats and locals, without being affected by any geopolitical uncertainties.
3. The effort of moving towards more joyful and free education models, compared to the rather disciplined and rigid philosophy we mainly see today (especially in early education)
How do you relax?
Running, reading, hiking, travelling. Being a happy school owner however, makes it some times difficult to separate completely private life from school’s active community!
Which 3 industry people would you like to invite to dinner?
Apart from my good friend Teacher Tom, whom I have the chance to dine with pretty often (!!):
1. Dr. Peter Gray, a man I greatly respect and admire
2. Sir Ken Robinson, because his famous 2006 TED speech on “school killing creativity” triggered millions of people around the world to start thinking what is wrong with our established education system
3. Dr. Abdulla Al Karam, Head of KHDA, in order to have the chance to discuss in detail his vision and plans regarding Dubai’s education future
Come and hear John’s talk at
IPSEF Middle East on September 28, 2016
You can read John’s career biography here
visit our website
IPSEF Middle East
Life-derived Learning 