Play IS learning...

Each day is a day filled with the opportunity for play and learning.  It's funny to me that those words are seperate...

Play IS learning and real learning takes place through play.

The following article Want to get your kids into college? Let them play... By Erika Christakis and Nicholas Christakis is a great example of why play-based, teacher facilitated learning is essential to success. 

In my hands ON experience with children I can attest to the following, "Through play, children learn to take turns, delay gratification, negotiate conflicts, solve problems, share goals, acquire flexibility, and live with disappointment. By allowing children to imagine walking in another person's shoes, imaginative play also seeds the development of empathy, a key ingredient  for intellectual and social-emotional success." Erika Christakis and Nicholas Christakis

Just some of our "play" today...

In this picture a few of my sweet girls were experiencing the differences of several sensory terms.  We observed that the some of our newly made playdough was hot, warm, cool, and cold.  We also added gold and emerald glitter allowing each child to choose which color and pointing out the names of each color to add to their white uncolored playdough.  We then discussed how to knead the dough. 

Following this, since it is St. Patrick's Day week for us, we talked about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and how we might go about finding it.  We imagined several ways we might find the pot of gold and what we would do with a pot of gold.  We practiced taking turns with the tools, pounded out pots and smushed them down to create something new. 

We also learned a new song:

---

Yesterday, during one of our circle times we discussed the color green, shamrocks, painting with brushes and hands and made these ADORABLE shamrock pictures. Our older pre-school children also sounded out words that associate with St. Patrick's Day: Lucky, Clover, Green, and Leprechaun (TRICKY!)