Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/thinking-inside-outside-and-all-about-the-box/5024830/
I have been out of the classroom for a few years now and I wonder if these types of experiences still happen in child care centers, pre-K and nursery schools? After reading this quote from Duncan and Martin, I wanted to share a memory from my mixed age group.
Arriving at work one October day, I was wearing flat shoes and realized how slippery the pine needles were in the parking lot. We were doing a lot of play with boxes at the time with our mixed age group of 3- to 6-year-olds, which gave me an idea. That afternoon we brought our wagons out to the area and raked up the pine needles.
This was a fun sensory experience in and of itself, with the smell, feel and slipperiness of needles inspiring joy in the children. We then brought the wagons full of needles back to our sledding hill and dumped them all over the hill. Children slipped and slid and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. The aroma of the pine was intoxicating and it was a beautiful fall day in upstate New York.
Inside the classroom, we had been exploring the many facets of boxes. There was the manipulative table where we had ...