Wednesday 20 March 2013

Purposeful play school

I spent some time last night reading the tot school section of this great siteThe tot school ethos is exactly the same as my natural approach to early learning - 'exposing early learning skills through play'. 

This is how we exclusively spent almost the first four years of Harry's life in terms of education and he has great levels of understanding and ability in everything we now do, so I have faith from our experience that it works!

I have been thinking about Peter recently and how to include him in some of the things we are doing. Reading this has given me the boost I was looking for to set aside some specific time for him.  I realised, however, that I have forgotten many of the things I used to do with Harry so I will have to re-aquaint myself as we go along! Peter has obviously been exposed to many of our learning experiences but also has often been kept on the sidelines 'out of the way' and hasn't had the freedom that Harry had at the same age. 

We started this morning by having play school time. I explained to Harry what we were trying to do and he was very enthusiastic (probably because it delayed the start of his to-do list!). So this was our play with purpose:

We used puppets to tell the story of The Three Little Pigs, building houses for them as we went. I asked Peter to find yellow Duplo bricks for the straw house, which he did fine. We built a house from Duplo for the pigs, talking about colours of bricks as we went. I showed Peter the pigs going in and out of the door and he copied, saying the words as he did so. He also opened and closed the window, saying the words as he did so.


We walked to the post box and the boys rode bikes/scooters. Peter loves his bike so this was especially for him too and we went at his pace, which meant Harry waiting for us or coming back when he reached the end of a road or a junction. 


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