Blindfolded taste challenge. Is it a pear, an apple or a tangerine?
Why use flashcards when we can have some real fresh fruit that we can touch smell and taste?
(by Claire Hadjinikolaou, English teacher in Athens school)
sensory play
Babies Christmas party in a play-based school
In a play-based preschool, babies’ class runs on a continuous providing of sensory-type real life stimuli, assisting this way children to discover the world through their senses, while playing.
This philosophy does not change even during party events! So, in Dorothy Snot, the annual ritual of Christmas Party for babies class (1-2 y.o), always goes as follows:
- It is held in school, while other classes party in some kind of large theaters. Babies need a stable and familiar environment
- It involves extensive parents’ participation, to boost the enthusiasm of the children and to ensure whole family celebrates kids’ first Christmas party ever!
- It isĀ based on a set of interactive play activities, connected to children recent school experiences, which lead to a festive ending (i.e. decorating our Christmas tree)
- It utilizes life-derived loose parts and lots of sensory play
So, please click on the following set of photos to get an idea of 2016 babies’ class Christmas party in Dorothy Snot preschool!
Balloon sensory play in babies class
Some times it takes just a balloon to keeps babies happy. Just hang it from the roof and let them play with it!
(by Anastasia Kouroubali, teacher in babies’ class in Athens)
Loose parts play for babies
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)
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)
Looking deeper
Drawing with cars is not just a fun activity for babies.
Looking deeper,Ā someone realizes that through this activity babies interact one another, gain socialization skills, taste the car, throw it down to listen to the sound, and more….
We teachers, the only think to do is to observe all these different behaviors.
Just by evaluating children’ reaction in any activity, we learn so many thinks.
(by Anastasia Kouroubali, teacher in babies class, in Athens)
The ball through the hoop
Bubbles in the water
Playing with water is babies’ favorite thing to do, especially during their first days in school…
To make it even better, we tried to add liquid soap into the water. Babies loved it!
They made waves in the water with their hands and suddenly, lots of bubbles popped up!
Bubbles we can touch & taste, even bubbles we can dress with!
(by Anastasia Kouroubali, teacher in babies’ class in Athens)
Toddlers had another idea
Ī¤eachers in toddlers’ class created a heaven, with hangin’ birds and then piled up boxes for kids, to be able to reach them.
But children had an other idea: they got sticks and bottles and touched the birds this way!
Respecting children is the key, no matter what their age is!
(video by Evangelia Nteka, teacher in toddlers’ class)
Marker-cars
Babies enjoy playing with cars or with anything else bearing wheels.
One day they found in class their favorite toy cars, having markers taped on their bumper! They also found a large paper roll on the table. Kids instantly took the cars and started drawing on paper!
By doing this, babies enjoyed playing but also improved their finger skills. Now, we maintain a permanent spot for this activity in class and our marker cars are always ready to take action!
(by Anastasia Kouroubali, teacher in babies’ class in Athens)
Life-derived Learning 