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Keeping it Simple - 4 Year old class


Around the classroom we put out some simple activities and watched the benefits children gained from them and how simplicity can progress into many learning opportunities that happen along the way. The benefits of giving children simple and less, helps in development of creating their own ideas.  And by transferring the creation into something, helps foster a proud child to be confident in their future development and learning.   



Fine Motor Development

The malleable properties of playdough make it fun for investigation and exploration as well as secretly building up strength in all their tiny hands muscles and tendons.  With strong hands, children are ready for pencil and scissors holding.  Below is a picture of Sofie, carefully cutting her cake creation.
 


As part of a simple tactile play, it can be squashed, squeezed, rolled, flattened, chopped, cut, and punctured.  As you can see in the picture of Jeffery, Jun, and Connor, the benefits of these actions provide fine motor development in different ways, not to mention hand eye coordination and general concentration.  Just by adding another element, a simple muffin tray, helped inspired some new creative play possibilities.     







On another occasion, I provided the children with another “simple’ inspiration, three different colored apples. It is interesting to see how and what they paint.                                   





Sofie has her own creation of an apple tree with her name at the top and apples in a basket.



Before Jun began to paint, she holds one of the apples in her hands. I wonder if this was helping her imagine how to paint a picture of them.

 

Ethan began by focusing on writing his name before painting. When he began painting, Ethan added details to his apples by painting the apple stems. 




Here’s another example of how simplicity worked in the classroom. I provided Jack with some “simple” materials on the projector. With these materials Jack was able to create a fence for the animals.





 

Until the next post!

Jess

 

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