The natural beauty of autumn leaves and fall harvests continue to impact our early learners as we explore, create, and imagine outdoors in our forest and school garden. As a way to integrate children’s fascinations with all that comes with autumn our team has co-created some intentional learning explorations that also connect to our student’s developing… Read More Autumn Play and Learning Invitations
Our team continues to learn about supporting student’s spatial sense and this post includes 10 new spatial reasoning invitations with printables. Our previous post on spatial reasoning and thinking called, 10 Playful Spatial Reasoning Provocations, can be viewed here. The Ontario Kindergarten Curriculum affirms the importance of expanding children’s spatial sense as it can in turn develop… Read More 10 Playful Spatial Reasoning Provocations Part 2
Before transforming our yard into our outdoor learning playspace, our early years team shared our hopes and dreams for the children in the space. We wanted it to provide opportunities for children to develop curiosity, exploration, creativity, innovation, resilience, problem-solving skills, risk-taking, collaboration, oral language skills, mathematical understanding, and connect with nature. We also kept… Read More Planning Outdoor Learning Playspaces For All Seasons
As I continue to learn from and with my early learners, I find myself increasingly curious as to why children are often innately drawn to types of learning that they would benefit from. For years now my early years team has observed children with lower language abilities drawn to language rich activities like small world… Read More Creating Meaningful Small World Play that Supports Language Development
It’s exciting to reflect on the year gone by not only to support forward thinking for the new year, but also to appreciate precious moments and memories. My Top Nine Photos on Instagram of 2017. Handle: meljmaxwell Spatial Reasoning Provocation A clear plastic table cloth with Sharpie paint pen shapes drawn on it invites children… Read More Best Nine Photos of 2017 on Instagram
Many children share their excitement for the holiday season with us and we are equally enthusiastic to provide them with opportunity to encounter learning through invitations to play and learn with a holiday spin. Below are some of the festive playful learning experiences that we’ve offered where children can bump into literacy and math throughout… Read More Playful Christmas and Holiday Invitations to Learn
Subitizing is ability to instantly see or recognize how many without counting. It helps develop fluency in number sense and it supports further understanding of more elaborate counting(e.g., skip counting) and addition/subtraction. Douglas Clements says in Subitizing: What Is It? Why Teach It?, “Students can use pattern recognition to discover essential properties of numbers, such as… Read More Subitizing Experiences with Freebies
View our new spatial reasoning blog post: 10 Playful Spatial Reasoning Provocations Part 2 here. As our kindergarten team continues to learn more about children and their development in spatial thinking and reasoning, we are continually searching for and creating meaningful provocations and experiences where children can construct their own learning in this area. We are… Read More 10 Playful Spatial Reasoning Provocations
The weather is warming up and the littles are so very excited to get out our portable water wall. The water wall provides amazing opportunity for open-ended exploration and problem-solving using real-life materials. Since Problem-Solving and Innovation play a significant role in Ontario’s new Kindergarten Curriculum as one of the four frames, experiences like a exploring a waterfall provide a… Read More Water Wall: Designing and Documenting
Hearts are something our early learners beg for all year long and not just on Valentine’s Day. We’re probably not alone either. Hearts are one of those shapes some little people crave to learn how to draw, and when they figure it out, they are unstoppable. We have one little this year that when asked what… Read More The Way to Their Heart Through Sensory and Loose Parts
inspired by play 