Category: Invitation To Play

A Paper Mache Adventure By Our Preschool Facilitators!

27/4/2021

Inspired by the nature, Reggio-Emilia system, and wanting to use less of the non-degradable materials, our facilitators decided to take things into their own hands and create bowls using paper.

So they got together on a Saturday morning, during the weekly training session, and embarked on an adventure to creating paper mache!

Once the torn papers were soaked for the weekend, on Monday post class, they got back together to continue their journey towards creating bowls. The soaked papers were mashed with flour, oil, fevicol and water to create the below, and put out to dry.

At Sparkling Mindz Global, it's not just the children who have fun learning and creating, but the facilitators too; making mistakes, learning through them, co-creating a safe, happy and creative environment for each other and growing together as a community!

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#learningneverstops

Contributed by Sruthy Krishna, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.

I Wonder What Mud Roti Tastes Like!

9/3/2021

It was a serene evening when the sun was setting and it was time to wind down and leave school for the day. I was intrigued by a couple of kids busy making a cauldron of mud and water mixed together, cheerful as their hands, clothes and feet were covered with mud.

It took me back to my childhood memory of playing hours in the sun and led me to wonder what they were up to. So I went closer and asked, looking at them busily toiling and moulding the mud, "What are we making here?"

N looking at me says without a blink, "I'm making chapatis and lollipops!"

Being pulled into his imagination, I continued, "Oh, I wonder how it taste like?"

"It is brown chapatis because it is made of chocolate and it tastes chocolaty", was the response I received without a second further spent in the imagination.

I was struck by the thought of how play goes beyond what it seems like outwardly, to a process that involves imagination, thinking, connections and logic, innovation, reasoning, motor skills and a lot, lot more.

Play revels the inner creator in kids. They blend culture with passion and create a world of their own. A world where chocolate chapatis are the norm and they can make as many of them as they want with abandon.

Here at SM we believe that play is just not an act but a deep learning process that a child involves in with all their senses and enriches with learning.

Contributed by Grace Veronica, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.

Our Joeys Learned to Daydream!

1/2/2021

Children love to daydream, children grow when they daydream. All the gadgets, technology, onslaught of media and the constantly on culture has robbed them of the stillness and the purpose of daydreaming. The joy of letting our mind wander and make random connections, the very well from which creativity feeds is being robbed off our children.

We also saw that it was something the children were yearning for. Little voices of boredom and big parent voices of constant TV watching or needing someone to engage them were clear indicators that children needed a more mindful tool for themselves. And just like that, we embarked on the daydreaming mission.

Little voices of boredom and big parent voices of constant TV watching or needing someone to engage them were clear indicators that children needed a more mindful tool for themselves. And just like that, we embarked on the daydreaming mission.

This is our story of how our children learned to daydream.

The 5 to 6 year olds' just had a daydreaming hour!

This was done to help them learn to engage themselves comfortably without finding the need to have someone or something around to engage them.

Post the daydreaming session children reflected and spoke about how they felt as they dreamed.

S says, "I was dreaming about the stars and was feeling calm and comfortable"
T "I saw a shooting Star that sparkled on me and I was feeling curious to learn about it, I also heard a bird chirping in my heart and I love birds"
Pr "I felt like people sitting around me and I saw lot of colors in the sky and I felt happy because I've never seen a colorful sky like that"

San an animal lover said that, he imagined going to an aquarium and saw a leopard seal that made him feel shocked looking at its hugeness.
Av was curious about animals and said that he had created new animals in his head.
Sa was able to think about what she could do when she gets home and agreed that she does not know how she felt.

Ar, swam into the ocean with Sharks, touched it and it felt soft.

When children learn to spend time with and by themselves, they learn to start valuing their ideas, wonder about their thoughts and learn to plan things ahead. Most importantly, they start to learn to listen to their own voice and pay attention to their feelings thus, building and eventually mastering an essential skills of self-sufficiency.

Contributed by Grace Veronica, Facilitator, Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool

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Let's make India beautiful: Our 5 year olds creating a change

22/2/2020

It's the month of August, the month that's special for every Indian. It was the month in which India achieved Independence from the British rule 73 years ago. As the rest of India celebrates this month by reminiscing the sacrifice of the various people who contributed to the Indian freedom movement, our pre-schoolers (5-6 year olds) at Sparkling Mindz began their discussion with a prompt "What do they love about India?" and the following were their responses along with how the discussion moved forward.

*Sh: I love that India is a big country and I love the national anthem.
Sh: Why do we sing the national anthem?
Ash: We sing national anthem to wish India*

This opened up an opportunity to discuss about the geography of India. The States, union territories and their capitals. How big India was before Independence and how big is it now and a little about the national anthem.
*Ana: I love that freedom fighters fought for our country*

This led us to discuss about who did the freedom fighters fight against and why? Why did the British East India company come to India? Who were the freedom fighters and how did they fight (Violence and Non violence)?

*Em: everywhere I travel in India, I love the buildings*
This led us to discuss about the famous monuments or heritage towns in India.

*Aad: I love India because it's colorful*
This opened up an opportunity to talk about the diversity in language, food, clothing, culture etc. And how inspite of our difference we love each other.
*Tan: I love India because it's beautiful*
*Abh: But, there are also people who litter in India*
This statement ignited a spark in the class and everybody seemed upset and concerned.
Facilitator: Why do you think people litter in India.
Abh: Because they are bad people.
Facilitator: It is? Sometimes in class we forget to follow ground rules, does that make us bad people?
Class: No, they just don't know the ground rules.
Facilitator: what do you think we should all do about this?
Tan: When somebody litters we can take it and throw in the dustbin.
Facilitator: Do you think they will learn if we pick up all the garbage for them? Is it possible for us to pick up all the garbage in India?
Ved: We need to clean our roads.
Abhi: We need to have more bins on the pathways.
Avy: We need to have poop bins for the dogs on the streets.
Adi: If you don't find garbage bin, keep it in a bag and throw it when you see a dust bin.
Post this discussion, children began reporting about littering incidents they come across on a daily basis while traveling from school to home and other places.
Noticing the concern and the spark in children to make a change, the facilitator gave them a choice to come up with ways to educate people on keeping India clean.

Few suggestions they came up with were-
1. Role play
2. Making placards
3. Making videos
4. Writing letters

Considering all their suggestion the facilitator helped them thread through a mime which they performed to educate their parents on Independence day. They also went about and wrote letters to people they see littering the streets.

Contributed by Yashika CG, Facilitator, Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool

Just How Do We Close This Window?

11/2/2020

It was 9:05am, which meant, it was time for the preschool children at SM to go into their respective classes to begin their day. As I was calling them all in to the class from the front space of the school, Aarav was looking around the window area , looking out, touching the surface, etc. He seemed to be in deep thoughts. As I called him too to go to his class, he stopped me and asked me, "Ma'am, how do we close the window?"

The window is opened upwards and in the front it has a heavy door like object with stars cut out, that needs to be opened for the window to be closed. And Aarav couldn't just figure out how this window was closed or opened. It looked fascinating to him.

"How do you think?"

Aarav: I don't know ma'am. Maybe the wind closes it.

"How do you know there's wind though?"

Aarav: You know in my home, there is a lot of wind.

At this time Aadya came along wondering what was happening. She tagged along in the conversation.

Aadya: There is very little wind outside ma'am.
Aarav: Wind will close the window.

"How will wind close?"

Aarav:" Air will come and shut."

Suddenly Aadya had another idea, "We can use a ladder!"

"Okay. How?"

Aadya:" Outside ma'am", pointing at outside the window

"You'll put it outside? What will happen then?,"

Aarav: "A car will come and crash!"

"Uh-oh!"

At this time, Siddharth came around with sock puppets on his hands, occupied with some other play. He stared at all of us standing around the window, not sure about what was going on, until I explained the situation to him. He immediately pulled up his sleeves (as if going on a mission), jumped up the slab we were all standing on.

Siddharth, to Aarav and Aadya: "So you open this (the heavy piece with stars cut out) and you close the window!"
And he jumped out and ran away as his mission is now completed.

Aarav and Aadya stared at this in wonder, trying to have an experience of opening and closing the window. After having figured it out, they happily jumped out and ran to their class with a newer dimension of thinking about how they could close the window.

This little conversation served as a morning inspiration as it was yet another reminder about how curious children are about every little thing. And their passion to figure things out, and also helping others to figure things out.

Contributed by Sruthy Krishna, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.

5 Little Monkeys or 5 Little Dragons?

8/2/2020

The 3 to 4 year olds at SM were having their Movement Song today and they were running, walking, jumping, clapping, singing...and just pretending to be different animals. Post this, the facilitator thought it would be a good idea to sing '5 little monkeys' to get the whole class together when they started to run all over the place. As soon as they started the rhyme, the facilitator was in for a surprise! The rhyme took a whole new turn itself! They wanted to be dragons instead. So we sang...as follows:

5 little dragons flying in the sky,
One fell off and bumped his head.
Mamma called the doctor and the doctor said,
No more dragons...

S: Ma'am, dragons don't get hurt. They get up say arrrrrrrrr and fly away.
F: Okay.
5 little dragons flying in the sky,
One fell off and bumped his head.
Then he got up and..?

At this point they are all making dragon sounds.
S: Then he got up and started flying because he's so strong. He doesn't get hurt.

F: okay so how about,
5 little dragons flying in the sky,
One fell off and bumped his head.
He got up and said "Arrrrrrrrr"

They all were strong dragons at this point, enacting the whole thing out, screaming "arrrrrr"...

F: And then?
Collectively: He flew to the sky.
F: Awesome!

'Opened his wings and flew back to the sky!'
F: Does that sound okay?

S: YES!!!
F: Let's do it then!

The new song is as follows:

5 little dragons flying in the sky,
One fell off and bumped his head.
He got up and said "Arrrrrrrrr"
Opened his wings and flew back to the sky!

4 little dragons flying in the sky,
One fell off and bumped his head.
He got up and said "Arrrrrrrrr"
Opened his wings and flew back to the sky!

3 little dragons flying in the sky,
One fell off and bumped his head.
He got up and said "Arrrrrrrrr"
Opened his wings and flew back to the sky!

2 little dragons flying in the sky,
One fell off and bumped his head.
He got up and said "Arrrrrrrrr"
Opened his wings and flew back to the sky!

1 little dragon flying in the sky,
One fell off and bumped his head.
He got up and said "Arrrrrrrrr"
Opened his wings and flew back to the sky!

They loved this new rhyme that they co-created and have been pretending to be dragons ever since. They had to be brought back to reality by calling their names to shake the dragons off and come back to class again as themselves.

Magic arrives and manifests when children are left to be themselves in the class. They truly become co-creators of their own learning, and enjoy the whole show. There was no facilitator in the class at that point, just a bunch of curious individuals who love to learn together!

The day we made dark blue! And many more...

6/2/2020

"Ma'am, we were looking for blue. We wanted to show you", says Aaditya and starts pointing out different shades of blue on his clothes, during the morning Circle Time in Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.
All his 3 and 4 year old classmates get inspired by this and start running around, spotting all shades of blue.
"Sky is dark blue ma'am", says Karthik by pointing at the worksheet he had taken home to colour.
This goes on for a while until the facilitator asks," Are they all the same blue?", and they collectively agree that they are all different shades.
"Why are they all different shades?", asks the facilitator again.
"Because somebody likes different different colours", says Hasini with a lot of thought, and everybody agrees.

"How can we make different shades?", asks facilitator.
Children came up with different combinations of colours such as mixing yellow, green and blue, red and blue, etc. to make dark blue and we agreed on experimenting post snacks.

Here are the results:
Siddharth tries to get green by using pink and black.

Aaditya comes running excitedly, pointing at his palms saying," Look, I made dark blue!!" It seemed like a lighter shade instead.
"How did you make this colour?", asked the facilitator to which he responds, "I was mixing the colours and I washed my hand and mixed it"

Abhijit mixes black with blue to try and get dark blue but black overpowers the little blue he had put. With a proud expression he told us that he's made dark blue!
"Hello guys!!", comes in Karthik with a victorious expression and clean hands, after making light blue by mixing blue and silver.
Anya finds her palms full of blue, "Wow", shows Hasini and wonders at how she arrived at that colour on her palms while Atharva mixes all the colours together and paints all over the chart.
"Hey! I got orange in this!!", screams an excited and surprised Avyan. When asked how he got that, he gives an expression of pondering how he arrived at that colour so he was left to his thoughts to reflect more. After a while he comes and says, "I made Iron Man colours - dark red and light yellow ma'am", and moved on to wash his hands.
"I painted blue at the back and golden in the front"', says Tanmayi when asked what she was painting.

Post this, their experiments were hung up on the wall with annotations, which they are always excited to look at with pride. In their eyes, they see perfection and learnings that they will talk about for a long time, and giving them the chances to experiment their thoughts bring in more questions, more curiosity, more wonder.

Children then went on a colour exploration on another day by mixing the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) in a bowl in the water with ink droppers. A wide variety of colours came in through :
"Look, Purple!", screamed Aaditya with excitement.
"I made Pink ma'am", calmly said Hasini with pride in her eyes.
"Mine is Red", replied Anya to Hasini.

They then asked for various other colours such as white, black, green etc.

Aaditya took white and black, and mixed them together to make "Purple!", he exclaimed, which he later changed to "Gray, ma'am."

Around this time, Avyan came in with a bucket, walking around collecting all the experimented coloured water in to clean up and they all cleaned up.

The next day was a Friday Connect where the whole school came together to do activities together. To take their experiments a step further, they were all given natural materials to make colours with: turmeric powder, coriander leaves, coffee powder, milk, tomatoes.

They started with attempting to get red colour out of the tomato pieces they were given.
"This is pink ma'am", said Tanya.

Then coffee powder made their papers brown. And when milk was given after they tried to get brown colour with coffee powder, Jordan goes," Ma'am, it smells so nice! Can I drink this?" and took a long breath to breathe it all in experiencing the freshness, Anagha follows.

Coriander leaves brought in a bit of a struggle as they were trying to squeeze to get the juice out. Some of them threw it to the side of the paper while some of them tried to stick it on their papers. When failed to stick, they moved on to playing with turmeric, making all of their papers and hands as yellow as the sun even after multiple attempts at washing them. It was already time to go home and some left with an unsatisfactory face as they couldn't experiment and make colours with the purple grapes that were put out in the front, but satisfied for having painted all over their papers in such amazing hues and shades of all sorts of colours with all sorts of things.

The end products were:

Yellow hands
Smelling like coffee
Mostly torn papers due to overuse of watery substances and repeated scraping with tomatoes
Wonder on why they couldn't get the colour green with the coriander leaves
Slightly overwhelmed with the yellow colour of the turmeric
Lots and lots of fun
Understanding that colours come not just in paint boxes
Trials and errors towards producing certain colours

Next week they read 'Mix It Up' book together to have a visual experience of mixing the primary colours and closed the mixing games and activities for the year aiming towards raising a generation that never stops to wonder or get inspired!

Contributed by Sruthy Krishna, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.

Lights...lights...lights all around!

4/2/2020

Invitation to Play (ITP) set up for the preschool children(2 to 4 year olds) that particular day was Light Play!

As soon as they walked in, they noticed the curtains were all closed and the classroom was dark. They were left to wonder why for a few minutes. After a few moments of silence, the facilitator started to switch on the fairy lights, torch, light box, etc., without a word.
They gasped! "WOW!", cried out a few of them while the others ran to touch what they had just seen, throwing their bags all around the class with much excitement.

To engage and experiment deeper, some of them took sketch pens and started drawing on the light box while some passed around the torch light around the light box to see if it created any additional effects. When they noticed there weren't much happening, the torch light was then separated and used individually by each child to see what it brought out on the walls and the floor - shadow hunt, playing with the intensity of light on different surfaces, etc. were some of the ways they played with the torch light. At this time, most of the children ran to pick up the trail of the fairy lights, jumping and twirling it around screaming and singing out their wonder and joy! A few more moments of light play later, they wound up the day's ITP.

The next day, children were to explore shadows of their favorite objects from in and around the class as they seemed interested in exploring shadows the previous day. The class was darkened as usual with a torch light present. Unfortunately, the torch light's light wasn't strong enough to project shadows so the facilitator used the phone's torch light, which worked! When children saw this light, they got curious on the sharp light that was projected and started to explore that by placing various things above, under and around it.

What did they see? Shadows! And coloured light! Out came an array of objects from all around the class to see different colours and ," Oh look! Huge shadow of me!", screamed some of them, seeing their big shadows on the ceiling.

Some of them had difficulty figuring out how to trace and eventually figured it out with the help of the facilitator and other friends. Once they were all done, they got up one by one and went for free play, and wound up for the day.

Contributed by Sruthy Krishna, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.

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#21stcenturylearning
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'Princesses Are Not Just Pretty!' Is it a boys' book or girls' book?

4/1/2020

"He didn't read the book because it's for girls, he said."

"He didn't read it. He didn't like it at all. "

We received this feedback from the parents of two of the 4 year olds when they went home with 'Princesses Are Not Just Pretty' book after the Library Hour. The facilitator thought it would be interesting to get to the bottom of this 'boy-girl' bias for the book by reading it and discussing the same book in class.

When the preschoolers come in the morning to school, they have a play session (called Invitation To Play) where they are given a variety of things to play with to begin their day. Today, we decided to setup a kitchen set to play with where they were all to throw a birthday party for an imaginary princess which, they all happily agreed to.
K and T: I am making tea for the princess.
An: I am cleaning up, folding and ironing all her clothes.
S: I am making chicken for the princess.
Kr, H and At: We are all cleaning up ma'am for the princess!
Together they all threw that princess the best birthday party ever and cleaned up after!

Post this, they all sat around for the book reading. Not many seemed excited about this particular book, especially the two boys who didn't want to read it but we were on an exploratory mission, so we went ahead anyway.

F: Do you think this book is only for girls?
H: No it's for boys and girls. Because there are kings and princesses in the book.
K observing and nodding as if agreeing to the question whether this book is only for girls.
Aa loses his patience in the meanwhile and calls out to the facilitator: Ma'am can you please read the book?
F: Alright.
And the book reading began.

On the first page, it talks about how the three princesses were taking a break, drinking tea, after managing their kingdom. There was a discussion on what kingdom is, where a kingdom was compared to the size of a country where they all wowed and drifted off to an imaginary land.

F: What do princesses do?
T: Have lovely tea parties.
An: Long hair
…
This conversation didn't seem to go anywhere. So the facilitator decided to give the children another perspective on princesses as they were having difficulties imagining a princess to do anything else. Since there were lots of games being played in the class with a lot of superheores and robots and fire, the facilitator thought of it as a good connection to make.
F: Did you know there are princesses who can shoot arrows and fight with swords?

There was silence. There were no sparks. No connections.

So the facilitator decided to give an example,
F: Who here has watched Bahubali?
Most of them raised their hands to this!
F: Do you remember the princess in that movie who fought the bad guys with swords, bow and arrow?

Suddenly there were sparks in their eyes as if they were all in another land where they were witnessing princesses fighting wars and being heroes!

Both the boys and girls were completely in on reading the book after this. After finishing the book, they all collectively agreed that whether they are princesses or princes, kings or queens, we need to be kind, strong and compassionate and that it's not always about looking pretty.

Boys thing - girls thing is a very common distinction that's prevalent in our society today. It affects our children from such a young age and they refuse to participate in things that remotely resemble anything of the opposite sex, making children most of the time very inflexible and to start fights.

An amazing book as this would have gone unread if it wasn't read in class to everybody and broken the stereotype of this 'boy-girl' confusion. As parents and adults who work with children, we need to make sure that we let our children figure things out for themselves and not pass down stereotypes and belief systems that aren't productive. Children need to learn to look at the world and wonder, and not corner themselves saying they are limited only to certain types of things just because they are born in that gender! We need to teach them to be free and wild, just as how naturally they are!

Contributed by Sruthy Krishna, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.

Getting Creative With Constraints: 2 pipe cleaners? No Problem!

13/12/2019

Today's interesting challenge for the 3 and 4 year olds at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool was to make anything they want BUT with only two white coloured pipe cleaners!

They took on the challenge with so much enthusiasm and out came a river overflowing with different kinds of play. They all started the play by sitting on mats on floor,
S: Ma'am look I have horns!

And they all pretended to be animals and roared around a little.

When the facilitator saw that they all got up and started running around , pretending the pipe cleaners to be guns and shooting fire, it was clear that they didn't know the pipe cleaners could bend too!
F: Did you know I could make anything I want to with these by bending it too?
This caught most of their attention and they each started bending it, trying out different things.
At: Fire!
K: Look, I made a 'M' (he used both the pipe cleaners and joined them)
An: I made a knot. I curled it.
And she unknotted it and looked proud of her discovery.

Suddenly Aa comes and says," I want to connect it", touching the tips of both the pipe cleaners. When asked how could he do that, he walked away as if in deep thought.
While this happened, Av came around playfully and poked it on the facilitator's face and walked away to join the others who continued to run around pretending to be animals with horns.

Suddenly T screamed at her friends," I don't like this game!" and made a sad face.
Nobody seemed to have noticed it. She screamed again. No response from the others.
Finally the facilitator asked her why she seemed angry.
"They are all screaming. My ears hurt!" replied T. At this point S was watching T and he visibly used soft voice. The amount of consideration, understanding and compassion he showed towards T was immense for a 3 year old. T was very touched by this and suddenly calmed down and went ahead to play with the others.

After a few minutes, H was done with her play with the pipe cleaners ,"I don't need it. It's ok", and went and neatly kept it in the cupboard where it belongs. And one by one they all went and kept their pipe cleaners and were done with their play for the day.

There was a lot of imagination, pretend play, problem solving and movement that were involved here where they were playing with just two pipe cleaners. It's amazing where things can take them when they are not restricted. Each child has a story to tell with everything they do. Once we observe and get to know their world, it will not only create sparks in our imagination but also is another chance for us to embrace play in our lives as us adults forget to play too.

Contributed by Sruthy Krishna, Learning Facilitator at Sparkling Mindz Global Preschool.

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#inspiringconfidentlearners
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#everychildcancreate