REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL ST LEONARDS NEWSLETTER Principal’s Message
3rd March 2023
By Mrs Simone Cooke
Dear Parents, Setting up interesting and engaging activities that offer invitations to play is central to our Reggio Emilia belief that there are “ three teachers of children: adults, other children and their physical environment” ( Loris Malaguzzi). One element which our teacher’s use in setting up an environment with purpose and intent, to promote engagement and curiosity is the use of is use of “Small World Play”. This consists of providing the children with miniature environments which they can use to extend their imagination, re-enact stories and act out scenarios that allow them to make sense of the real world. Small World play is particularly beneficial for building children’s language skills as the children build their expressive skills and narrate what they are creating during their play. This often involves explaining the choices that they are making, re telling well known stories and inventing new ones. This builds their vocabulary and allows them to practise using new words in context. This enables them to start rich conversations with peers, as they compare the scenes and stories which they are creating and will often recite phrases from stories as they relay dialogue between animals and characters and draw upon past stories they have heard. Offering the children small world environments allows them to process and act out daily events and recall past experiences such as feeding an animal, driving a car or putting a baby to sleep, it also encourages them to be creative and experiment with different roles. We often hear the children incorporate their own experiences into these play scenarios such as “ I’m the mother and I’m patting the baby to sleep because she had a bad dream” or “ My dog has been naughty so he has to stay on his dog bed” . This type of role play allows children to take control over their play and allows them to experiment with different outcomes and practice cause and effect in a safe way. REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL | ST LEONARDS NEWSLETTER
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