Part of my philosophy is that I
enjoy being outdoors and feel that I can observe a lot more interactions of
children sharing, role playing, running around and utalizing their gross motor
skills, and dialoging with one another.
However, it was a beautiful day today I decided to bring out a container
of chalk. As I walked outside I noticed
a couple of the children walking beside me curious as to see what I was going
to do. I placed the container on the
concrete and stood back.
One by one the children choose a
colour and started to create their own drawings that meant something to
them. Observing the children I noticed
that some of them were drawing faces, lines, and shapes. I also recognize how some of the children
were holding the chalk like a pen enhancing their fine motorskills, as the
chalk started to get shorter it became more appearant to them to re-adjust
their chalk. Neuman (1998) reminds us,
‘literacy is profoundly social process that enters children’s lives through
their interactions in a variety of activities and relationships with other
people’ (pg. 8, cited in Hamer & Adams, 2006, pg. 37).
Reflecting on Technology it made
me think how the structure of a pen can be transformed into different shapes
and sizes yet still have the exact same outcome. Meaning that we have crayons, colouring
pencils, chalk, coloured felts and paint all contributing to their learning and
development of drawing. Learning
together in a group helps the children to scaffold each other, share their
knowledge and take advantage of their environment (Te Whariki, 1996).
Making use of the outdoors gave me
the opportunity to contribute towards their growing knowledge of using
different resources for writing and drawing.
This activity allowed the children to express their thoughts, ideas and
become imaginative and creative. They
were able to talk with their peers about their drawings and having the option
of sharing what they did with each other.
The New Zealand Curriculum states that quality outcomes result from
thinking and practices that are informed, critical, and creative” (Ministry of
Education, 1993, pg. 32).
The
next day it rained and when we came outside the children said “where are our
drawings?” to which I replied the rain had washed them away. I continued asking the children questions
such as if we use a colouring pencil and draw a picture on a piece of paper; do
you think the water would wash it away like what happened to the chalk
drawings? This extended the children’s
learning by introducing another form of resource for writing; we talked about
what would happen if we ran out of colouring in the pencil. The
children were encouraged to think what we would need to fix the problem and re-use
it again; to which one child said we would need to sharpen it again, so we can
continue using it. McNaughton &
Williams states that “questioning is such a valuable and pervasive teaching
technique that it is relevant to most learning experiences for young children”
(2009, pg. 156).
I
believe that children should be able to have fun and enjoy what they are doing
yet at the same time enhancing their learning development. Children are then able to support their
younger siblings or peers in the centre, role modelling ways of showing them
how to hold a piece of chalk or colouring pencil. Smorti suggest that “technology is also a
creative and purposeful activity aimed at meeting needs and opportunities
through the development of products, systems or environments” (1999, pg. 5).
MacNaughton,
G., & Williams, G. (2009). Techniques
for teaching young children: Choices in theory and practice (3rd ed.).
Frenchs Forrest, Australia: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki, he whaariki
mätauranga mo nga mokopuna ö Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum.
Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.
Hamer J & Adams P. (2003). The New Zealand Early Childhood
Literacy Handbook: Practical Literacy Ideas for
Early Childhood Centres. Dunmore
Press
Smorti, S. (1999) Technology in Early
Childhood. Early Education, 19, 5-10.
Picture of children
Hello Linda, I loved how you took the tamariki outdoors and utilized the space while giving the children opportunities to have free creative play without teacher interference. Have you thought about getting the tamariki to draw road signs? I have done this with my centre and everytime the children get their bikes out now, they also want the chalk so they can draw parking lines, or stop signs. I think this is a amazing way to get children actively involved in road safety. It helps during our excursions because the children pick out different signs, especially the 'Give Way' and they know what it means. This would also make a great opportunity to ask your local Police Constable to come in and discuss the importance of road safety, as so many of our tamariki do not understand that roads are dangerous and I believe it helps to ensure that the ones in our care are safe. You could also take the chalk indoors and do chalk drawings on paper. It is still different to the usual blackboard experience and gives them another way to look at using chalk. Ka pai on a great reflection.
ReplyDeleteHi Rachael
ReplyDeleteThank you for your feedback these ideas are Tino pai as I can see the benefits of the children being involved and interactive. We also have a long bike trail at my centre and this will give the children a chance to look at safety, as being a positive way of taking care when we ride our bikes. Also, I liked how you mentioned about getting a Police Constable to come in and elaborate more about safety, one of our parents is a Police Officer so this would be a good opportunity to get our parents involved. Thanks a lot for your feed back Rachael I appreciate a different perspective to what I am doing at the moment.
Kia Ora
ReplyDelete“CHALK” I enjoyed reading this blog it brings back my experience when I was back home. When I was growing up in the Cook Island I remember we always have trips to the beach to collect there white rocks. I use to think what do these rocks do, but then we used to do exactly what you have done here with the children. We draw pictures on concrete and we all had our own little space to draw on. Later we were introduced to using the chalk and we never went to visit the beach.
This is a great experience for children to be able to draw on a huge blank of concrete because they have so much room to draw and move around. I find that using a paper can sometime limit your ideas because you have to be able to fit all these ideas on this paper and sometimes it’s too much to fit on the paper, but with the concrete you can draw as big as you want and you can keep using the same resource over and over again. Thank you so much for sharing this it’s good to see that the children is being introduced to different learning experience.
Well done mama
I love your blog it doesn't connect to technology but looking at the process it does kind of relate to technology. The children were able to work through the whole process and also learn from the process of this activity. I love how you got them to just draw on the concrete because that's is surely a different way of providing a fun activity for the children to experiment and enhance their thinking.
ReplyDeleteYour activity has given me an idea to try this at my centre, I know the children will definitely love it. This is also a great way for children because sometime giving children papers to draw on don't really give them much pleasure as sometime there's not enough room, children get scared they might rip their paper. But drawing on the concrete allows the children to think clearly and draw a big picture so they can see what it actually look like on a bigger space, it also allows them to put all their thought into reality. Job well done. maamanoiho!