I talked recently on this blog about how children initiate their own learning in our Nursery.  I also talked about how the adults in Nursery create invitations to play or enhancements based on children’s interests or next steps.

Here are some recent examples. 

In early May  there had been frequent requests to read the same story, Spider Sandwiches. So, Mrs Wiles made a Spider Café in the role play area. Then we found out that one of the children found eyeballs hilarious and another became fascinated with small balls after finding a golf ball on the way to school. 

This led to green monster slime with eyeballs in (yellow ping pong balls) and a few days later to Black Eyeball Soup (black water in the water tray with eyeballs floating in it.)

So what skills are being developed whilst playing with this activity?  Children were told that there was treasure they couldn’t see at the bottom of the water tray and under the eyeballs.  They used what they could find (sieves, fishing nets and tongs) to find it.

Children were also creating monsters by adding round stickers to make eyes embellishing them with collage materials and drawn on features.

Elsewhere in Hedgehogs on the same day, an adult created a racetrack on the carpet to extend repetitive car play and create opportunities to use the language of comparison.

This is how we create new learning opportunities whilst still being driven by children's own interests and allowing them to initiate their own learning.