Our preschool children have spent the week using attributes to describe the world around them. They learned that attributes are used to sort or categorize. Children naturally look at objects and notice similarities and differences. Through this type of child-led play, their teacher is able to enhance their language by providing them with words to describe what they are noticing and have conversations about the connections that they discover. Below you will see the many opportunities that their own curiosities were beautifully turned into teachable moments!
Monday they learned about the attributes of their faces. They created self portraits and hung them up in their room! Later they practiced using their nose for smelling and discussed what they used their hands for throughout the day! They learned that their hands help keep them safe while playing on the playground and help them greet their friends when they arrive at school with fist bumps, hugs, and high fives.
They connected their learning from Monday to new experiences like exploring leaves and apples! They noticed that leaves have many different attributes. They used flexible thinking to discover different ways to categorize their leaves. Then they noticed that leave have lines just like their hands. So, they painted and stamped with their hands, and then with the leaves! What a great connection for a child! With the apples they discovered that there were far more similarities than differences. So they painted the apples to give them a variety of attributes and stamped with those, too! I love this example of adaptable lesson planning. Open ended plans, in this case, truly reflect the nature of child-led learning.
The children chose their own dress up clothes and compared similarities and differences.
