The children used the book as a reference for retelling the story themselves and used the small world toys to help fix the stories in their minds. Using more than one part of your body to learn means that information is retained better. So here they had heard the story, they were looking at the story themselves and then acting it out again.
Little “R” decided the tress needed Owls! So some of our Autumn toys were brought in to the story.
Little “L” decided the boat was far too small for so many Pilgrims so she gathered up Noah’s Ark and told me that this could be the Mayflower!
After lots of story telling and talking about the differences between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans we tried making some Indian head dresses.
Stickers are fiddly things to peal!
The children chose what coloured feathers they would like in their headdress and added them.
Don’t they look lovely!
I made up a very quick sensory box as well. I used corn and some of the acorns from the Autumn sensory box. I included the cinnamon sticks as I think that always gives a festive smell and feel to the box! We found a wooden Turkey and some trees. I would like to find more Thanksgiving related items to pop in their for next year. This will have to do for this year though and the children seemed to really like it. They asked about the smells. They found some cloves hidden in the corn as well.
We also used the corn to transfere from one dish to another using spoons. It is great hand eye-coordination practice for little ones and helps them to develop strong controlled movements.
LEARNING INTENTIONS AND IDEAS FOR EXPANDING LEARNING:
Today I wanted to extend the children’s knowledge of Thanksgiving a little. We talked about it yesterday while playing in the homecorner and making big festive dinners with the food. They enjoyed the story and and had been briefly introduced to the history and traditions of Thanksgiving. Today I wanted to set up some small world play and use it to help develop their understanding and to cement some of the learning for them.
CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE LEARNING:
- Communication and Language
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Physical Development
- Understanding the World
- Literacy
- Expressive Art and Design.