Emily set the different sections at the Kindergarten a task at the beginning of January which involved a tuff spot challenge. The task involved all members of each team working together to create a tuff spot based on their children's current interests and their developemental skills. We have attached some photos of this challenge above. February's challenge will be creating Story Sacks for each section.
Baby Unit idea was based on the young childrens interest in filling and emptying. They used all different kinds of beans within different containers and spoons. They babies spent time feeling the diffrent textures of the variety of beans, and using the diffrent implements to fill the containers which suported their fine motor skills.
Toddlers decided to do a Dinosaur themed tuff spot to develop the interest of their children. The team covered the 5 senses by picking a different sense:
Sound – playing dinosaur sounds
Taste – using real food for for vegetation
Touch – exploring different textures on the base such as rice, cereal and jelly
Sight – using brightly coloured objects and display; dinosaur books
Smell – lime flavoured jelly used as a lake
Toddlers even added an erupting Volcano!! and the children were really fascinated and engaged in imaginery play for considerable lenghts of time.
Foundation went for a Space themed tuff spot as a lot of their children were showing an interest in Space and rockets due to the first British Astronaut being is space. Children were given the opportunity to make things to include in the tuff spot, such as aliens, moon rocks etc. and to draw some star constellations. They included different textures for the children to explore and books for them to learn about the moon and different planets.
The practitioners enjoyed this particular challenege and worked really well within their teams. It enabled the practitioners to look at ways to develop and support continous provsion and extend childrens interests to higher level of learning.
