Ropes make for one of the best loose parts’ play in preschool! Watch the next video:
life derived play
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)
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!
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 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)
- 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!
Boxes everywhere!
Suddenly, large and small boxes appeared in toddlers’ classroom. What could we do with them?
We turned them into sofas, exactly like in the stories we read. We imagined sailing in the sea and boxes were transformed into boats!
We played “hide and seek” and we found unique ways to hide ourselves inside the boxes. We had fun, we played and we learned! We got familiar with special notions such us “in and out”. We practiced our gross and our fine motor skills.
Last but not least, we learned to share and to wait for our turn! We became more sociable and friendly. We came closer and bonded more!
(by Evangelia Nteka, teacher in toddlers’ class in Athens)
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!
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.
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)
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)
Life-derived Learning 