26th March, 2020 - Thursday

Please play the following morning greeting message from Ms. Najla:

Song of the day: here

Activity 1:

Language and Literacy: Letter hunt

Materials: 10 plastic or wooden letters including the first letter of the child’s name and family members names. E.g. (A,B,C,H,M,L,R,S,T,K) you can add more letters later to further the child’s interest as a back up. (if you don’t have plastic or wooden letters you could make your own by writing letters on a 1 inch thick piece of card or on cardboard and cut the letters out), rice or sand, tongs/spoon, deep medium sized bowl

Beginning: Put letters into a bowl and pour rice over the top, making sure the letters are hidden. Tell the child today for our activity we have a bowl with rice and a pair of tongs. “I wonder what you will do with it?”

Middle: The child may start to pick up the tongs and begin searching through the rice. When they pick out a letter, ask them, “ I wonder what letter that is? Do you know the sound of that letter? Whose name begins with the letter…?”

End: Ask the child to help you pack the materials away. As an extension you could pick a few letters for e.g. B & M, and ask them “ I wonder if you can find things in the house that begin with the same letter/sound?” 

Purpose of the activity: This activity helps your child with letter recognition.

Duration of the activity: 10-15 minutes

Brain Break activity:

Activity 2:

Mathematics / Fine motor skills: Cutting around shapes with scissors

Materials: A piece of paper with a square, rectangle and triangle drawn on it (big enough for the child to cut. Otherwise, draw two shapes on one paper and the third one on another sheet).

Beginning: Show the paper with the shapes on it to the child and ask him/her what shapes they see in front of them. Hand the scissors to the child and ask him/her to cut all the shapes one by one.

Middle: Make sure that the child has a proper grip on the scissors and let him/her cut all the shapes out.

End: Once the child has cut out the three shapes, talk to them about their properties (For example, how many sides/points does a triangle,rectangle/square have?)

Extension: Let your child cut an image from the newspaper.

Duration of the activity: 10-15 minutes

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                                              ACTIVE LEARNING

“Active learning is defined as learning in which the child, by acting on objects and interacting with people, ideas, and events, constructs new understanding. No one else can have experiences for the child. Children must do this for themselves." - Mary Hohmann & David P. Weikart 

                                                                                                                                            

The HighScope Curriculum is distinguished from other curriculum by its importance on “Active Learning”. That means learning is not simply a process of adults giving information to the children. Rather, the children are active learners- discovering things through active involvement with people, objects, events and ideas. They learn best from following their own interests while being actively supported and challenged by adults. In the classroom, the teachers are as active and involved as the children. They give thoughtful attention to the materials they provide, the activities they plan, and the ways they talk with the children to both support and challenge what the children are experiencing and thinking.  This approach is called “Active Learning” – a process in which the adults and the children are partners in the learning process.                                               

                                             

Active Learning has five ingredients, all of which must be present when the teachers plan an activity for the children. These five ingredients are:      

1. Materials:  The adults provide enough materials of children’s interest. For Instance, the children like to play with cars, or dinosaurs etc. Then these objects may be used for sorting, classifying or counting activities to develop mathematical skills.

2. Manipulation: The children have opportunities to explore and transform the materials they choose to use. For instance, the adults do not demonstrate how to use the materials. If a child does not want to count the cars but he/she is sorting them by colors then he is given a choice to do so. The child is still learning a mathematical skill by classifying the cars by their colors.

3. Choice: The children choose materials and play partners and plan their activities according to their interests and needs. For instance, a child chooses to play in the block center with the cars only with a certain person.

4. Child language: The children describe verbally or non verbally what they see and do. For instance, in an activity, if the adult is doing all the talking the child becomes distracted and impatient; therefore no learning is taking place. When a child talks about what they are doing, they modify their thinking to take new learning in account.

5. Adult Scaffolding: The adults support the children’s current developmental level and offer gentle extension to advance their abilities to reason, create and problem-solve.  For instance, using the same example, if a child does not want to count the cars but he/she is sorting them by colors then the adult may encourage him/her to count the sorted colored cars and discover which is more and less.

Family involvement is a key aspect of “Active Learning”. The teachers are experts in child development and the parents are experts on their children. Working together will lead to a happier and successful child.  Just as children engage in active learning throughout the class, they can do the same at home when parents incorporate learning into different parts of the day. The children’s homes can be extensions of the classroom and therefore can be natural learning environments. Family members can use the home environment to build on learning; for example, supporting math concepts my naming the shape of common household objects, such as round plates, or counting the stair steps on the way to a room. The parents may also provide their children with activities keeping in mind the five ingredients of Active Learning. 

Regards,

Ms Zarmeena Aamir         

Active learning video ⇓