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)
Maria Gryllaki
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)
Getting autonomous and developing fine motor skills in babies’ class
One day in babies’ class, “Frogy” the frog paid a visit, reading us the book ‘’Frogy is getting dressed’’!
Children were very happy to see and listen to him and decided that they want to get dressed like Frogy!
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!
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!
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)
Hula hoops for babies
Hula hoops turn into an excellent type of sensory play in babies’ class!
(by Maria Gryllaki, teacher in babies class in Athens)
Wow!
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.
That kind of sensory play assists babies to begin forming a positive connection with themselves.
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”!!!
(by Maria Gryllaki, teacher in babies class in Athens)
Children are always right, even when we think they are wrong…
Sometimes we, educators, make mistakes…
One day, in our beloved yard, Chrysi got a cart, turned it upside down and tried to climb on it.
I hastily said “Chrysi, that’s not right“. She, however, stepped on it and proudly started playing by turning cart into a slide. The game started and Christos came to claim his turn.
All I had to say then was “next please!“. Chrysi’s “wrong” use of the cart turned out to be the right game!
(by Maria Gryllaki, teacher in babies’ class in Athens)
Babies play the melodica
In our babies class, we love to sing and play the melodica. Children get excited on music and show great interest in this specific musical instrument and the sound it produces.
Today, after singing our song, they played the melodica themselves. And the result? Spectacular! Just like young musicians, the blew the instrument and pushed the buttons. Some even managed to produce a nice sound!
As a result of this playing, attention and memory of children was stimulated and practiced their control and coordination skills.
But most of all, this experience provided children with the ability to express themselves and have fun! Music is always an excellent tool for babies to discover the world.
(by Maria Gryllaki, teacher in babies’ class, in Athens)
Sand, rocks and spoons
In our babies’ class, we encourage children to interact with a number of materials, natural and artificial.
Experimenting has to be unconditional, in order to trigger all senses.
This way, we give babies the opportunity to become familiar with reality, engage and interact with it.
Such life derived materials can be sand, rocks, spoons, cups, etc.
Getting in touch with real world always turns kids more creative…
(by Maria Gryllaki, teacher in babies’ class in Athens)
Life-derived Learning 