This month we have expanded on our understanding of our sense of self by exploring our connections through ourselves and others. We did this by first printing out images of everyone in our classroom, from educators to children, and even stuffed animals brought from home that form some function of a security blanket. Once these images were printed we laminated them and placed them in a bin for our toddlers to explore. We wondered what would our toddler friends would do if they had people figures that looked like their peers and educators in the room. Would they identify each individual and connect our play to our real-world experiences? Or would we be open to creating new connections and transfer our exploration to real life experiences?
When the children noticed that the people figures were in fact everyone we see in the classroom they got excited and began to look through them. Ayoub was smiling and saying, “it’s me!” Oakley seemed shocked as he stared at himself for a while, he then smiled. Oscar was shouting waving his wooden person back and forth, “it’s Amanda!”. Sophia asked Amanda, “where’s Sophia?” Amanda helped her find Sophia and she then smiled and pretended to put Sophia to sleep.
After a while we began to notice the connections between our toddlers growing with each other and even with others within the room. This demonstrated to us that we were able to explore new connections thanks to imaginative play! Our classroom has been more unified feeling a sense of belonging with each other, and as educators we were also able to strengthen our existing connections and nurturing relationships with each child.
After realizing the children really loved these types of activities of self-identification, we put together other provocations to enhance the children’s learnings, such as making our own person by colouring people cut-outs. We provided skin coloured markers and mirrors to look at ourselves and have that sense of self during the activity. The children really grasped all these types of self-identity activities. We then placed our colour people on the art wall at the eye level of our toddlers. They now visit our creations with the printed-out people figures. We noticed the children like to take turns walking around holding the educator’s figures, and they even began turn taking with them allowing us to share.
We are going to continue to explore our connections within the classroom by continuing to explore new ways to engage in cooperative play through a sense of self, belonging, and engagement.
