At Granby, the children are at the centre of everything that we do. We let children learn through play, then extend their learning even further.
So, when a child brought in the book Jack and the Beanstalk, we shared this and then we took their lead and focused on an extended learning project.
Being creative and allowing children to use their imagination to help extend activities can provide the children with further learning opportunities.
Some children absorb information in different ways, so it is important to provide all children with the opportunities to allow them to develop skills.
As early years practitioners, we know that children learn through play and that most of the child’s time at nursery is spent engaged in child-initiated play. How then, as adults, do we extend a child’s learning even further?
Psychologist, Lev Vygotsky identified that children should not be left to discover everything on their own. Instead, we should provide them with challenges that are slightly too hard for them and gently ‘pull them along’. Based on this theory, we need to let children learn through play, then extend their learning even further.
How do we put this into practice? All children need the opportunity to take part in their own learning, we are careful not to just give children experience of directed learning (i.e., telling them what to do), but instead let their tasks be open- ended – let children take their learning where they want to take it, letting them speak to one another and work things out. Practitioners observe and ask open ended questions such as ‘Can you tell me how you made that? Why is the beanstalk so big? How could you make the beanstalk even taller? What does feel like at the top of the beanstalk?
