Literacy and Numeracy • How does it work in a play-based curriculum? It’s never the main goal of an activity. It’s never, “Today we will talk about the letter A and practice writing the letter A. ” It’s only the means to a desired end result. “Tomorrow is Mr. Potato Head’s birthday so I want to make him a birthday card. How do I write, ‘Happy Birthday?’ What letters do I need?” • We use the set-ups and conversations to “teach” the lessons. For example, last week we had a sari-sari store. The kids realized that they didn’t know how much they were selling the items for. One of the older boys E_____ decided to make a sign for how much the items were. He didn’t know how to write “Pesos” so he took one of the play money and copied it from there. Everyday interactions are the best source of learning. • Cooking is the best! We measure the ingredients. We read the recipe and the labels. It’s literacy and numeracy but fun! • Voting is also a great activity! Having an opinion counts in more than one way! We count how many want something. We ask which option has more votes, which has less. We can add or subtract if a person decides to change his mind. Again we’re learning but it’s fun! • All around the classroom there are numbers and letters. And they all make sense to the student. They’re not just displayed as reference. We have number steps from 1-20. The students choose a number to form a line. The Helper Chart has the names of all the students alphabetically arranged so we sing the ABC song to figure out who’s the helper of the day. The block area has unifix cubes and we’ve used them to “measure” things around them. How many unifix cubes long are your feet? • There are books all around In the classroom, almost everyday at Circle Time we read a story and we have a book reading corner with a couch. Plus have Library one hour every week and our librarian also reads them a book. Then they get to choose a book to take home. • What do you do with overzealous parents who want their kids to be “advanced”? We do interviews before the child is officially enrolled. The child plays and gets observed by a teacher while the other teacher talks to the parents. We ask what the parents expect out of the program and we tell them what we do. We explain that we do not necessarily “teach” ABCs, 123s. What we do focus on is critical thinking skills, social skills, a love of learning. If they’re okay with our program, they proceed with enrollment. A week or two after the first day of school we still have an open house where we explain again what we do, how play/ inquiry based works. Even after this, we still get parents who want different things. We try to work with them without compromising the program. But the best way for them to buy into the program is for them to spend a day with us and see how it works. Parents are always welcome in our classroom.
