Small world play is acting out scenarios (scenes from real life, stories and/or imagination) in a miniature play scene, created with small figures and objects.Small worlds are often set up in a certain theme (construction area, pirates at sea, ducks in a pond) that are relevant and meaningful to the child at the time and they usually include a sensory element (water, sand, dry pasta, leaves, …) which adds more layers to the play.

As with any kind of play, there are numerous ways in which small world play supports your child in it’s development. By providing children with opportunities to re-enact certain experiences, you are helping then to reflect on feelings and events in life in a safe way. While engaged in small world play, children can explore and experiment with different emotions and act out these scenes in their play.

Small world play invites children to be creative, and boosts confidence when children are able to experiment with different (both new and familiar) materials and build something they think is awesome. It is also an excellent way to practice social skills (when for instance building a small world on a play date) where children can connect with each other and learn to take turns, listen to someone else’s ideas, compromise and so on.

There are always many problems to solve in small worlds (“Not all the dinosaurs fit in my cave!”) and children learn how to work through these by reasoning and experimenting. Small world play helps to develop numeracy by giving lots of opportunities for grouping or sorting items and counting them (“How may small dinosaurs do you have? How many do go in your cave?” “Now, how many are left?”) Small world play is great for building language because it allows children to practice their language in a meaningful context. While playing, children are vocalising and learning about nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions and so on (“parking the red truck next to the yellow tractor”).

Through small world play children get to learn about cause and effect while experimenting and manipulating different items (“letting a car go down a slope will make it go faster”). Children also get the chance to explore certain ideas in the world, like how a hospital would operate differently from a police station or a school and why. Children as young as 2 years old can engage in (simple) small world play and start telling their own stories.

As part of our Christmas week, we constructed our very own version of Santa’s Village! Students used a variety of sensory materials to accomplish this. The figures utilized were one Santa and three elves made out of blocks. There were also polar bears and even a narwal that landed themselves in our village! In addition to this, we constructed log cabins out of Lincoln Logs and made it snow with flour!

Bodies are water were created with blue glitter, and students delighted in making their figures and animals go swimming! Lastly, students decorated the landscape with toy candy canes and icicles.

Play dough can be found in almost any preschool classroom.

The most important benefit of play dough is the word “play”.

When teachers introduce play dough, children are simply given opportunity to play and learn at the same time.

There are several benefits to using this malleable substance.

One involves fine motor control. An important aspect of exploring play dough is the use of those fine muscles in the child’s hands.

Young children NEED to build their fine motor strength and control and time exploring play dough helps give those small hands a good workout.

Play dough also offers opportunities to increase vocabulary.

Time at a table with play dough is a terrific opportunity to naturally emphasize words like soft, squishy, roll, flatten, cut, squeeze, as well as just having simple conversation about what the children are doing with their hands.

For some children, play dough is about making something but for most, it is simply about exploring the process and talking about whatever comes to mind during the process.

For this activity, we created evergreen trees out of artificial pine boughs and green play dough. Everyone enjoyed creating their own trees, manipulating the play dough and having fun while doing so!

Measurement concepts are often a part of children’s interactions. “My dad is bigger,” “I can jump higher,” and “I have more Playdough than you!” are common comparisons that children make. From the child’s perspective, these statements compare quantity; however, they provide a nice introduction to measurement.

Unfortunately, it is an often-neglected Content Standard in early childhood classrooms. Throughout the many projects we do throughout the week, we use both standard and nonstandard tools for measuring. Students are also provided with a multitude of measuring experiences throughout the year.

For this activity, your little one was presented with a problem. They were given five strips of paper of varying length. They were then asked to sort them by size. The target words for this activity were long, longer, and longest. Young children are natural problem solvers. To increase vocabulary and the comprehension of new concepts, students are asked questions that facilitate further exploration. The purpose of this is to promote measurement investigations and an interest in “figuring out” the answer.

Christmas is a theme that offers activities for your preschoolers to explore family traditions together!

It is such an exciting time of year and an exciting theme!

Your preschoolers have been learning about each other’s family traditions, which brings about so many opportunities for learning about giving to others!

Taking the time to explore the different aspects of this time of year can help give your preschoolers some perspective and understanding to it all!

For this activity, we decorated Christmas trees! Using artificial trees, garlands, and ornaments, we lavished our creations with color and fun.

Experiences like these grant children the independence to be creative and purposeful. When children choose how to play for themselves, they experience freedom in making those choices. They also begin to see connections between choice and the consequences or results of that choice.

Open-ended materials can be used in many ways so children can decide for themselves how to use them. It is this intrinsic motivation that allows a child to regulate her own feelings and desires in order to keep playing.