Play and PK

As part of our work with Anne Van Dam, we've been looking at documentation of children's play and considering what working theories the children might be developing.  Rachel writes: X is very skilled at small world and construction play. Whatever small world toys we put out, he often creates the same sort of scenario. One that involves some sort of disaster or chaos! If he is playing with cars, there has been an accident or a big traffic jam. If he is playing with the doll house, somebody has fallen off the roof. If he is playing with the train track, a tree might have fallen on the track. Each time he is playing he will shout, ‘Quick! Come and look’ then explain the dilemma. I often ask him ‘How will he fix it?’ or ‘Who can help?’ Then X will either come up with a solution to help or the disaster will develop into something much worse!   In contrast, something that is interesting about this idea of chaos is that X actually likes things to be very ordered. While lining up...

Simon writes: Three of my new students (aged 3 and 4) have been settling in this half term. They have been doing lots of playing alongside each other, but this was one of the first times they cooperated on a common project, building a house. The conversation was in Spanish, so I couldn’t benefit from it. Once it was built, they had encircled themselves and they enjoyed being in the inside they had created and furnished it with sundry items to make it more of a home: Our early years team have been working with Anne Van Dam , looking at what ‘working theories’ the children are developing in their play. This follows the work of Helen Hedges .  “Working theories are present from childhood to adulthood. They represent the tentative, evolving ideas and understandings formulated by children (and adults) as they participate in the life of their families, communities and cultures and engage with others to think, ponder, wonder and make sense of the world in order to participate more effecti...

Simon writes: As an EY team we look back at 'Moments in the Day' together - times when something in the children's play and learning strikes us. We share documentation and discuss. In our last time doing this in the school year, Estelle shared this photo with us: She wrote: I’m still puzzled about this activity that S., G. and M. engage in regularly. It is often initiated by M. but not always (I think). I’m not sure I’ve watched closely enough at the right moment. I wonder what skills they are using here and that makes me think that I almost need to try it myself to find out. Perhaps they will allow me to quietly join in…. Otherwise I could have a conversation with them. There is definitely a quality to this play that is ‘safe’, mindful and we can assume that it is good for their well-being based on the repetition. Maybe for the artist no. 1 there is a feeling of being the leader, being ‘seen’ and valued. For artist no. 2 perhaps the feeling of making a connection in this w...

Simon writes: There's a kind of paradox about play in the classroom. It's something to do with play being a freely chosen thing that is pleasurable to do and involves making and changing your own rules. And yet - there is  the teacher. What is she doing? Can she 'teach' when there's play? Sometimes of course, the teacher has little role: children don't need us adults to play and are of course learning through their play nonetheless. But how can the teacher play a part? It usually helps me to look at a particular instance, so it helps that we document some of what happens in our spaces. As an Early Years team, we share documentation of moments in the day where we think interesting play and learning is happening. We talk about what's going on and look at some of the approaches to learning involved. I chose some music making in the forest as our focus this week, writing about what I had observed. Here is some of what I wrote for that: Forest school had a Where ...

Simon writes: We have three parallel PK classes, with children aged 3 to 5 - Sun, Star and Moon class. At certain times children choose to move between them, and sometimes we teachers get to work alongside each other too. In the first two schools I worked in, I hardly saw other teachers teaching at all, now we see each other in action a lot. It's interesting to me how, even though we plan together and use the same resources, and for all of us the children and their play is central, there are differences between the about where the buzz is, partly due to the group of students, partly due to the adults. For Rachel, it's around books. Reading books of course, but also u sing them as a focus for art, maths, language and drama. There have been weeks when we'd agreed we were going to focus on a book, say The Very Hungry Caterpillar , and looking back afterwards, I've realised that Sun class, with Rachel and Karen's enthusiaasm and expertise around this, have gone a lot de...