Child Initiated Activities

[Guest]

Hello everyone, I was just after some ideas and advice, I have had a total mind blank. Currently my reception class are completing a topic called "The only way is up!" the children have shown a huge interest in hot air balloons and so we have a hot air balloon role play area, made paper mache hot air balloons etc.... and next week we are going on our first adventure in our hot air balloon. Completing a hot air balloon race. I have set up a small role play (jungle themed) with a rope ladder coming down from a hot air balloon to show someone has landed, I have put footprints out, cameras, bionculars, animal and images/words etc... and a note saying that to win the race we must locate and photogrpah a Big black Gorilla and put in the scrapbook diary - in the introduction we are going to discuss what a gorilla is and research it using different media but I have had a total mind blank on child initiated activities linked to Gorilla's I could do. My adult led are going to involve an animal safari on the field and descriptive writing about the animals we spot. I was wondering if any of you wonderful people have any child initiated activity ideas I could use?

 

Thank-you in advance! Emie x

[catma]

I think it's possibly more about providing resourcing that the children will be able to make sense of and then develop their own outcomes from without needing too much scaffolding.

 

Have they experience of gorillas or their habitats? You could develop stimulus through some BBC natural world clips or similar because unless they have something to go on, their own play won't be drawing on it at all!! Where did the gorilla idea come from? Were the children bringing this in to their play already?

 

Could you make a small world habitat with animals/books etc so they can apply new vocab and share their knowledge?

 

To be honest I would probably do the adult supported activities and then see what they did with that stimulus in the other resource areas and build on those outcomes, e.g. through any creative work, recording etc.

 

Cx