Ropes make for one of the best loose parts’ play in preschool! Watch the next video:
sensory
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, 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
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)
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)
Playing with corks and bottles
(video by Evangelia Nteka, teacher in toddlers 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)
Hanging a paper tape in babies’ class
I hanged the paper tape over babies’ heads and they instantly started to experiment with it.
Stretched their body in order to reach the tape, touched it, twisted it and eventually, as were trying to play with it, they improved their movement.
And beyond that: discovered one more tool to communicate each other!
(by Anastasia Kouroubali, teacher in babies class in Athens)
A swimming pool for toddlers in school
(by Jenny Diamantopoulou, teacher in toddlers’ class, in Athens)
Life-derived Learning 