Houses: A Collaborative Project

This project all started from this one inspiration at the Duplo on Monday. A few children were building houses and I asked them what their houses were like and this attracted a lot of attention and interest. I also asked about different rooms in their houses, but I quickly realised that this was met with some confusion and lack of understanding. Rooms? I got answers like "teddy bear," and "I have a doll." Hmmm. Guess we don't really understand the concept of a room. When I said words like "kitchen" and "bedroom," the children began to understand a bit better. The next day, we put out a resource that the children could play with to explore different rooms in their homes. I don't have a photo of it, but it's essentially like a doll's house, but separate boxes to act as rooms, and the children set up the furniture and characters appropriately.

Next, we looked at photographs of different types of homes in their community. There was a lot of interest as they recognised buildings and houses like their own, and we discussed things like the shapes, colours, and what they're made of. From there, we began our project of making a house.

One child drew a big square after discussing what shape the house should be. Next, several children helped cut along the lines.

This was a great way for me to assess some of the children's scissor skills. I also made sure that children had appropriate scissors for their developmental level. You'll notice that some of them have spring scissors while others have regular children's scissors where they operate them by opening and closing.

Next, we had a discussion about how we should colour the house. Most children agreed that we should use paint. I asked them what we should use to paint it because a house wall isn't always smooth. There was some confusion, so to help them understand we went outside to look at and feel the texture of the wall on the outside of the school.

Some children said, "bumpy," "rough, "ouch!" and "spiky." When we went back inside, we looked at some of the things we could use to make the house look like those words. We found gloves that have textured materials attached to them and we all agreed that they would make our house look bumpy.

When our house dried, we talked about what elements it should have. They all agreed that we needed windows and a door, so we got to work. Again, this was a great opportunity to see some scissor skills in action. Throughout this project, I had children dropping in and out, so I always had different helpers.

Next, we painted the door blue. We used rollers because that's what "house painters" use.

Throughout this project, we had been looking at photographs of houses for reference. The children noticed that there was white trim around the windows and doors. We discussed what they might be called, but they didn't know, so they learned two new terms: "window frame" and "door frame." They used the rollers to add this to their house as well.

In some of the photographs, the children noticed a "fence" or the porch and they wanted to add that as well.

Finally, the children discussed their need for a triangle roof. They drew the shape, cut it out, and painted it red. One of the children said as they were rolling, "It feels like I'm painting a real house."

When everything was dry, two helpers attached the square house and triangle roof using sticky tape.

Sadly, I forgot to take a photo of the finished product up on the wall! I assure you, it looks fab because the children did it all by themselves with only verbal guidance and prompts from me. After we hung it on the wall, some of the kids made labels so that visitors will know what all the parts of a house are.

There are so many things we can do from this project, and I'm hoping it's not over yet. As you can see, this interest has already made its way into other areas of their learning:

And all from this one little model:

Down by the Station

Boys and their trains. My afternoon class is absolutely smitten with anything with wheels - trains in particular. One wee guy always comes into Nursery exclaiming "trains! trains!" Naturally, the planning has made a shift over to trains and other wheeled vehicles to cater to this current interest.

We have an outdoor train set which the children love to build with. We also have an indoor one that uses Duplo trains. More often than not, the trains are out, and I really don't mind. Some people may think that the children need a different resource out to expand their learning and experiences, but they seem to do that all on their own with the same train set. They work together, construct complex tracks, problem solve when faced with challenges, and add in other resources to extend their play (like wooden blocks). If they're getting all that from a train set, and they aren't bored yet, why put it away?

As a result of this interest, trains and other modes of transportation has been incorporated in other areas of the curriculum to get them exploring different learning experiences. Using their interests to get them to explore things they wouldn't normally explore is a great way to get them involved. Some of my boys rarely go to the mark-making station, but when I put some trains and paint on that table, they were all over it:

You may notice I only had blue paint out. This was a conscious decision, as we are focussing on colour recognition at the moment as well. A lot of my kids really struggle to connect colours with their colour name, and I find they get a little less confused if we only have one colour out to focus on. Our language throughout the activity is based on the movement of the trains, the colour of the paint, and their experiences on trains and where they went.

We have a growing collection of cardboard boxes in our outdoor area (always a great open-ended resource to have on hand!). Naturally, the boxes became a train one day.

The children lined up the boxes, climbed in, collected tickets, and they were on their way! Some great language was happening here: ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd), who drives the train, prepositional language (in front, behind, forward, backward), and discussion about where to go. They all agreed to go to the train station. Very practical.

We've been singing a wee song that I remember from my childhood:

Down by the station,
Early in the morning,
See the little puffer trains
All in a row.

See the station master
Turn the little handle,
Puff, puff, toot toot
Off we go!

Do you know any other train songs we could use to expand our repertoire?

The Body: Child-Led Learning

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about mark-making which showed different stages of drawing people. One of the examples depicted people with legs coming out of their necks, which is quite a common thing for children to do when drawing people.

As a result of this, I thought a good way to progress the children's understanding of the body would be to look at it a little closer and learn about all the different parts. First, we traced someone's body:

Then we made a mind map of what we know about the body. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of the mind map right now, but essentially, it says "bodies" in the middle and the children drew pictures, shared ideas, and wrote words all about the body. One wee boy said that we all have a love heart in our bodies! Another boy prefers writing to drawing, so he wrote words like "feet," "chin," "back," "eye," "eye," (yes, twice, because we have two eyes) "body," and "nose." He wrote it all with minimal support!

Next, we took photos of different parts of our body. The children were in charge of deciding what body parts to photograph and they were in charge of actually taking the photo. The more responsibility the children have, the better.

After we printed the photos, some children helped to make labels for them and we stuck them up on the cut out body tracing on the wall.

Simultaneously, there was a body painting activity going on. The children chose what body part they wanted to print onto paper with paint:

The body painting was so popular, we had to bring the activity outside for some collaborative foot printing:

The paint trays got a little slippery, so there may have been some painty bottoms! If you do this activity with your class, make sure you have some tubs of warm, soapy water, towels, and chairs handy for the clean up!

Speaking of clean up, always get the children to be responsible for cleaning up their own messes. It's their classroom, so they should be responsible for it to have a sense of ownership.

Phew. All that from a drawing of legs coming out of a head! And we're not done yet! The children have shown an interest and knowledge about bones and the heart. I'm hoping to extend their learning experiences with this interest in mind.

Note, these activities did not all take place in the same day. These occurred over the course of a week or so, always adding and extending learning experiences based on things the children said, did, or asked about.

Natural & Open-Ended Resources

How many times have you set out resources for your kids to use, and they haven't used them according to your expectations? How often do we see educational toys that are designed with only one use in mind? Pirate ship play-grounds can be exciting and look really neat, but they limit the type of play that can occur. A pirate ship play-ground will ultimately result in pirate play. There's nothing wrong with pretending to be a pirate. I can "yar me harty" with the best of them. But as educators, we should be encouraging children's natural curiosity, creativity, and need to explore, and one of the best ways we can nurture that is through open-ended resources.

With open-ended or natural materials, children can explore, create, imagine, and learn through play without the resource dictating what their play should be. I'm always surprised at what children's imaginations come up with; it's often not at all what you intended, and that's okay!

After a short "stick safety" chat, the children had free reign of our collection of sticks, branches, driftwood, and medallions. Someone discovered the flower box and decided to add a floral finishing touch to their creation.

Sadly, children don't always have the opportunity to use their imaginations in their play. With video games, computers, and ready-made toys, children have all the heavy lifting done for them.

With natural and open-ended materials, children can do the heavy lifting all on their own.

Or with a little help from a friend.