Many young children imagine the little wooden truck in their hands will one day turn into a real one. For our youngest students at Hua Yao, this happened. However, before we share the details, let’s go back to the beginning.
A few months ago some children were playing with fire trucks. Seeing this interest, we extended it by adding fire trucks in the hope that more children would join in on the play. And they did! We noticed that this kind of play offered many concrete language opportunities. For example, children could use action verbs, such as squirt, climb and drive and concrete nouns: truck, ladder, jacket, hose and wheels.
We also introduced an English action song. Children sang while pretending to drive a fire truck, climb a ladder, and even put out a fire by squirting water from a hose they represented by clasping their hands together and making a shhhh sound.
We wondered if children would be inspired by the addition of colour and other materials to the firefighter play. For example, would children be able to pretend an orange or yellow circle could represent fire? Would children be able to use blue paint to represent water? And would children use these materials to make meaning as a shared group?
We decided to test out our wonderings in play. But first, we thought about the developmental opportunities.
● This experience would enable children to use particular colours to mentally represent(symbolic thought) for a purpose (blue paint as water, orange paint as fire).
● This experience would enable children to take on roles within a specific narrative in their play (firefighters).
● This experience would enable children to play alongside other children engaged in the same theme (putting out the fire).
● This experience would enable children to manipulate objects and experiment with cause and effect, trial and error, and motion (filling cups with water, squeezing paint,funneling, transporting water).
● This experience would enable children to represent objects with characteristics in common (a stick or a paintbrush can be a hose to squirt water) and objects without characteristics in common.
● This experience would provide children with an opportunity to make connections between their own life (what they have experienced) and the play narrative (usingsomething familiar to squirt the water)
Verbal invitation in English: The teacher calls out“FIRE, FIRE”in English and points to the easel.
Materials: The easel includes pots of watery blue paint, brushes and some thick, shiny orange paint poured down the middle of a large piece of yellow paper.
Verbal Prompt in English: The teacher starts singing the fire truck song... “Hurry,hurry, drive the fire truck...”
