Play-Based learning...

"Play nourishes every aspect of children’s development – it forms the foundation of intellectual, social, physical, and emotional skills necessary for success in school and in life. Play ‘paves the way’ for learning." (Canadian Council on Learning, 2006)

I believe that Kindergarten years are very crucial for children's development and play plays a very important role. Our schedule allows us to have these uninterrupted play-based learning time twice a day for an hour each. At first, I use to think that my students are just wasting their time, but when I started engaging with them and participating with them, it started to make more sense. The children were not just playing, they were using their oral language to communicate with their peers, solving problems, doing math, writing and much more!

I started taking lots of pictures and started documenting and writing quotes. Now my students ask me to come and take pictures so they can talk about it later. It's fascinating how they remember what they were doing and can recall what they were doing even the next day.

Here are some of the pictures of play-based learning from my classroom...

Desert by C.T & W.H. (Sand Table)

Marble Run designed and built by: K.P. & L. W.

My Castle. By: S.S.

Hospital By: L.W.

Princess Castle By J.Z., M.H., S.B. & C.T

Pirate Ship - By: K.P., D,P., E.W., A.B. S.J. & W.N.

Car Tunnel - By: L.W., E. W. & M.J.

Rhyming Words and Word Wall Words - By: J.Z.

Several students worked on this building using straw connectors.

My House - By: L.W.

Bird House - By: J.P.

School - By: M.J. & A.B.

Beautiful Day - By: J.Z.

Pond & Flowers - By: M.H.

Mario's Car - By: J.P. & K.W.

Short Tower & Plan - By: J.P.

Experimenting with Balance Scale

Gift for mom

Which is your favourite cookie? By: L. W.

Material List - By: K.P. & L.W.

Writing our friends names

We wonder if the snow is clean for us to eat? Survey By: M.D. & D.P.

My Inspirations...

I've been following these wonderful ladies for more than a year now. I've been inspired by their work and the work that they are doing in the area of early learning. I can spend hours on these two blogs and learn new things every time I visit them. These two wonderful ladies are Joanne M. Babalis and Jocelyn Schmidt. If you visit my classroom, you'll see that some areas of my classroom are the reflection of their classrooms.

This is my second year in Full-Day Kindergarten and therefore, I am always looking for ideas and practices that I can use to change and improve to help my students' learning, as well as my own professional learning. I'm always looking for PD opportunities to help improve my teaching and browse the web for innovative ideas and strategies. Joanne and Jocelyn have motivated me and have helped me to look at Early Learning through a different lens.

When I started my career as a Kindergarten teacher last year, I was exposed to the world of Inquiry-Based learning. I had no idea about this new pedagogy. So I started my own professional development. I read several articles and browsed several websites and came across Joanne's website. Her journey of transforming her classroom motivated me to do things differently. Her enthusiasm of learning and helping other Early Learning (EL) teachers is contiguous. She blogs about her professional learning and the learning of her students in a way which helps new teachers like me to try things differently.

During my exploration and learning about Inquiry-based learning I also came across Jocelyn's website. Just like Joanne, she has inspired and motivated me in my journey of becoming a better EL educator. I was struggling with the partnership that we are required to have with our ECEs (Early Childhood Educators) and Jocelyn's professional reflection about this very topic helped me improve the relationship and partnership with my ECE.

I'm very lucky to have these unofficial mentors in my life! These two ladies have been my inspiration and I know that they've inspired many more teachers like me who are seeking some help in the area of Early Learning. Thank you ladies for taking time out of your busy schedule to write about yours and your students' journey!