babies

Babies Christmas party in a play-based school

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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.

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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:

  1. It is held in school, while other classes party in some kind of large theaters. Babies need a stable and familiar environment
  2. It involves extensive parents’ participation, to boost the enthusiasm of the children and to ensure whole family celebrates kids’ first Christmas party ever!
  3. It is  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)
  4. 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!

Babies Christmas Party 2016

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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)

Looking deeper

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Drawing with cars is not just a fun activity for babies.

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Looking deeper,  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)

Bubbles in the water

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Playing with water is babies’ favorite thing to do, especially during their first days in school…

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To make it even better, we tried to add liquid soap into the water. Babies loved it!

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They made waves in the water with their hands and suddenly, lots of bubbles popped up!

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Bubbles we can touch & taste, even bubbles we can dress with!

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(by Anastasia Kouroubali, teacher in babies’ class in Athens)

Getting autonomous and developing fine motor skills in babies’ class

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One day in babies’ class, “Frogy” the frog paid a visit, reading us the book ‘’Frogy is getting dressed’’!

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Children were very happy to see and listen to him and decided that they want to get dressed like Frogy!

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We opened the box and took out all clothes we had. Hats, scarves, bags, shirts, shoes…Every kid chose what he or she liked and put it on.  Some of them even posed for a picture!

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We all then helped Frogy to get dressed. Kids worked so patiently and used their imagination in order to put on him as many clothes as they could!

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And when finished, we hugged our friend and we went for a walk in the yard, all dressed up!

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

Marker-cars

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Babies enjoy playing with cars or with anything else bearing wheels.

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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!

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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!

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(by Anastasia Kouroubali, teacher in babies’ class in Athens)

Wow!

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A favorite habit of our babies lately is to look themselves in the mirror. They make faces, cry and observe their bodies with pride. They talk or laugh, watch that and get excited.

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That  kind of sensory play assists babies to begin forming a positive connection with themselves.

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So, in order to further develop our sense of self-awareness, but also boost our confidence, we put on some color in our faces and we all looked in the mirror!

And as Marina said, “Wow”!!!

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