This month in Preschool 2 room, we had been having so much fun building bridges with popsicle sticks. We used tape to connect two tables together and some friends said there was lava on the floor! The bridges that we made looked like a spiderweb so we called it Spiderweb Bridge. In order to help the spiders get on the bridge, we decided to use popsicle sticks to make bridges bigger and steadier. The children stuck them under the tape with colourful sticks as a team, and it did not take us too long to finish. When the bridges were done, we brought out the spiders and put them on the bridges and pretended they were crawling on it.
As educators, we love to see how our daily observations of the children’s interests, can be expanded into different learning activities. When we play the “Floor is Lava” song during the day, the children use their great imaginations to connect the activity with the song together. The educator only had a chance to begin to set up this activity before the children started working on it spontaneously, turning it into their own activity by using their imaginations and plans for how they thought it should be done. This shows us the children can independently use their teamwork skills, which is amazing as well!
Now that we’ve noticed that children are interested in building bridges, we could provide different materials for them to explore. We could set up some blocks outside in the sandbox for building or activities with bridges and animals.
