Getting ready for September - Back to school!

It's the holidays and you are enjoying walking along a shopping street or through a mall, relaxing and making the most of being out and about during the day...then something catches your eye and you see the perfect item....for an area of your classroom or that you know the children will just love... Know the feeling?! It's the time of the year where I actually have the most time to really reflect and so is often when I am able to come up with some of my more creative ideas and I would not swap it for the world. Today I was in a cute kitchen/garden store with lots of natural wooden products and came across this little stash - am very pleased! The gorgeous toadstools (cork stoppers for wine!) are just right to go with the waldorf playmats I blogged about a few weeks back. I am especially pleased with the scoops to complement our pincers that we already have - great for promoting fine motor skills in a playful way :-) And the best bit was that they didn't cost the bank :-D Will follow up with another post showing them in use once school is underway!

Eric Carle Studio - Limiting choices to promote creativity

Eric Carle Studio - Challenges!

I love the idea of limiting choices at times to promote risk taking and creative problem solving. This could be putting out collage materials but no scissors, limiting the choice of colours, no pencils, etc. Sometimes our settings are all about offering a wide choice and allowing the child to choose freely but it is equally as important to offer times when choices are limited so that cooperation, team-work, problem solving and risk taking can begin to occur. Thank you to the Art Studio at The Eric Carle Museum for their inspiring work!!!

Am back :-)

Had a wonderful long holiday abroad and now starting to think about school again before starting back in September. Went shopping in the local 'cheap' shop this afternoon and have found lots of lovely little bits to make an Autumn inspired play set...watch this space!

Holidays :-)

Will be quiet on here for a few weeks! Will post when I get back :-)

Waldorf style playscapes

These amazing wool/felt playscapes have been made for my class by Cheryl from Soft n Woolly (http://www.etsy.com/shop/softnwoolly) - I received them this week and am so excited to find bits and pieces to go with them to create inspiring small worlds for my new class to explore in September. I asked her to create four different ones - river, beach, roads and woodlands and think they are all gorgeous. My absolute favourite is the last one - the detail is stunning and I can just imagine little fairies hiding in the caves! I cannot wait for little hands to play with them! Thank you Cheryl :-)

Building in circles!

My class often choose to play with the wooden blocks and the number of different ways they come up with to use them never ceases to amaze me. Last week, I simply offered them on top of one of our tuff spots and placed a single triangular brick in the middle as an invitation to continue. After nearly 2 hours of play (returning to it after short breaks each time), a group of 4/5 children had created an amazing circular city of symmetry. They worked together to ensure they didn't leave any bits out of their pattern and it was a pleasure to listen to their conversations as they worked - I love this time of year when the children are able to put all their creativity, sharing and team working skills together to create something fabulous. Sadly I didn't get a photo of the completely finished build but the process was the most important part and I was lucky to watch it from start to finish :-)

The jealous car....

The children had been engrossed in their play for some time when one child called me over and asked if he could tell me the story they had been working on. Here it is...

Once upon a time there was a car factory. It had lots of workers and all the cars lined up carefully when they needed fixing or upgrading.

One day, the queue of cars waiting to be seen was so long that some of them had to be turned away for the day and were asked to return the next day.

The large green truck was mad. He did not want to wait. He thought it was unfair so he did something bad.

He drove as fast as he could into the factory so nobody else could use the factory that day either. Everyone was very sad but luckily noone was hurt. The police came straight away and took him away.

He felt really bad and said sorry. Then he helped to rebuild the factory but a bigger one so more people could be seen at once. Then they were all friends and he was good from then on!!!

THE END

I loved all the dinosaurs standing watching in the second picture!!! All the children had a little part in remembering the story and they were very pleased that it had such a happy ending!!!! :-)