Ropes make for one of the best loose parts’ play in preschool! Watch the next video:
What’s on the catwalk?
Pre-Ks on the runway of Plefsis dance studio, in Athens! Actual life-derived learning.
Mixing cultures
Hosting students or teachers from other countries, is a desirable situation in our kindergarten!
Early this year we had the luck to be joined by Shriya, an education student from India.
We love this process cause helps our children to understand the diversity of the world and to spot the differences between humans and civilizations.
As always foreign students do, Shriya presented us her country and her family. She told us about Indian civilization and Indian mythology, participated fully in school life and played a lot of games with the kids.
The difference in language is always a bit of barrier, but kindergarten kids find a chance to exercise their English and become really enthusiast when manage to understand each other.
Of course, most of fun was the time of bollywood dancing!
So long for our next host. Shriya, thank you so much for being in school, we hope you had as good time in Dorothy Snot kindergarten as we had!
So much learning on fruit play
Talking about winter fruits in our English pre-k class. We introduced new vocabulary by giving fresh fruit to the children to feel, smell and taste. With their eyes closed they were able to identify and name them all!
Then, we made a fruit salad. After we ate it all we played games in the yard.
We rolled plastic fruit to see how far they can go…
….hang them high and tried to hit them with improvised bats.
We also had a real grocery store set up in our dramatic play area!
The next day we decided to make smoothies. We came up with a recipe….
….executed it and decided whether we like it or not!
(by Claire Hadjinikolaou, English teacher in Athens school)
Pop-up play for toddlers with loose parts
Loose parts like pipes, tubes, tires, balls of any kind, all are priceless tools for never ending play in a preschool.
Children love to create the most unusual type of connections between the objects and explore their physical and imaginative limits.
Why use flashcards instead of real fruits?
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)
Let it snow in Athens!
Living in a hot Mediterranean city like Athens, snow is a rare thing to see, downtown. But today, it was one of these days!
Being unfamiliar with snowy weather, the Municipality of Athens advised all schools to remain closed. However, a brave play-based school like Dorothy Snot is not afraid of some snow flakes!
The sure thing is our kids loved it. Being able to play with snow in the heart of the city is such an unusual experience down here. Not to mention that most of our 4 and 5 y.o. had not ever seen Athens in white!
Play in life-derived conditions is always the most exciting thing for children. And we are dedicated to keep providing this kind of play!
“Can we have one more party tomorrow, please?”
Returning from Christmas Holidays, pre-Ks started describing how they spent Christmas time. Each one had a story to tell about relatives visiting his/her house or about a beautiful gathering at a friend’s home.
So, they decided it would be a good idea to invite over the post-toddlers’ class, for the first tea party of the year!
They wrote and distributed the invitation and prepared a welcome note!
They got excited by their own creations (look below Anastasis and George astonished in front of the welcome note they wrote, hanging on the wall!!)
They rearranged tables and chairs in such a way that we could all sit together! Children from both classes had lot of fun!!!
Having finished the tea party and after cleaning the class, Rosa said: “I really loved that! Can we have one more tomorrow, please?”
(by Spyridoula Patouna, teacher in Pre-K class, in Athens)
Christmas English Class!
Brilliant performances in the world premiere of the play Laundry before Christmas. So much energy you could tell the cast had so much fun performing!
(by Claire Hadjinikolaou, English teacher in Athens school)
Risky Play
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)
Life-derived Learning 