Why Begin The School Day With Inquiry and Play?
““Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” -Fred Rogers”
Setting the tone for the school day in a play based way prepares students for a day of learning. Through play students develop self regulation, deepen social competence, increase oral language and vocabulary skills, explore, discover, create, negotiate, problem solve and much much more!
I love starting the school day with “Ready To Go” tasks. These tasks can simply be manipulatives on a table for free exploration or prepared task cards with the materials already gathered. No matter the configuration, the purpose is to provide play-based activities that students can immediately go to as they enter a classroom. Starting the day in such a way provides students with structure and routine. It also gives them the immediate feeling: “I am safe at school.”
Starting the day in this play-based way is a great way to deal with staggered entrance of students, teacher must-dos (such as attendance and lunch count) and helps decrease the anxiety levels of both students and teacher with the transition of home to school.
If you have table assignments, it is pretty easy to simply take pictures of areas around your classroom and lay a photo on the table so students know to go directly to that area, or simply sit the task activity on their table so they can start working immediately as they enter.
If students aren’t assigned a space, you can simply make a chart, as the one below, to get your kids going! This chart, if made with a lot of velcro, is very flexible to change student groupings and activities that meet their needs.
Find out more about great ways to start the school year off here by listening to our Podcasts. Here are a few with a back-to-school theme…
Also Available at Teachers Pay Teachers!
Product Description
You will love these 17 Grab-and-Go Task Cards to get your students right to work as you take care of those morning teacher chores.
This set of cards is great to introduce students to independent work led by task cards at the beginning of the school year.
The tasks depend on common classroom manipulatitives that you will probably have readily available. But in case you don’t or you would just rather have your manipulatives made of laminated cardstock, everything is included to get you going!
Task Cards:
Mr. Potato Head
Make a Face
Play Dough
Make a Sculpture
Painting With Water Colors
Sorting Buttons
Pattern Shapes
Counting Objects
Build With Blocks
Dominos
Dueling Dice
Links-a-Plenty
White Boards
Cube Trains
Teddy Bears Geo Boards
Playing Cards
Tangrams
Other Back To School Products
Back to School Themed Writing Activities
Back to School Sight Word Readers
Also available at Teachers Pay Teachers!
Build your child’s (students') fine motor skills as well as develop confidence by using these fine motor activities. Each category begins with novice activities and then moves forward in complexity; aiding development.