SuperHero Play

As a Supernumerary Deputy Manager  I often find it hard not to intervene when I see an area of provision that needs more support. Canning (2011) goes on to state that the environment can have a powerful effect on a child’s play, with this in mind it is important to make sure the environment offers the best learning opportunities.

Finding a Focus:

As a deputy manager it is my responsibility to guide all over twos staff, when looking at the Home Corner I felt it was important to involve the preschool room staff and use this project as a training guide.

From a conversation with the Preschool team and myself  we decided to look at how we could encourage the boys to use the role play area more effectively, the Preschool team felt the boys needed encouragement to use the Role Play area continually throughout the day, they discussed how they felt the boys quickly became bored with the Role Play area and wouldn’t spend very long in there even if encouraged. We decided to use mind maps to see what the children were interested in, an article for the daily mail stated:

Around 96,600 five-year-old boys, 30%, were not able to count up to 20

Two in five young boys struggle to write simple sentences or their own name

Overall, 69% of five-year-old girls performing well compared to 50% of boys

(Mactague 2014)

This is why I felt it was important to find different ways to engage the children, it also highlights the importance of providing continuous provisions to engage boys and girls.

Using Mind Maps

To identify who said what the children were asked to pick a colour for boys and a colour for girls, the girls chose blue ‘like frozen’ which led the boys to the choose red ‘like superman’

Another Mind map was carried out asking the children what to put in the superhero café, allowing children to have choice with what went into the superhero café meant that all children had a chance to communicate their wants and needs.

Superhero Café

 when setting up the home corner it was important to include real resources

 

 

Superhero Gym

From mini observation we were able to continue the idea of a café but adding in children’s own experiences. If we Carefully observing children reflecting on what children are doing in the area and what they are saying is essential in ensuring it becomes a continuous provision (Gray & Macblain 2012),

Superhero Clothes Factory

During the soft play activity, the Children were talking about what Superheroes wear and asked if they could make their own superhero clothes, following on from the soft play a superhero factory was set up, with lots of fabric and pens. The children were encouraged to create different role play outfits and using fabric pens wrote what they had made and what superhero it was for.

 

Superhero Smoothie

Shop

Following on from this conversation the Role Play area was turned in to a smoothie shop part of this gave the children an opportunity to make their own smoothies.

 

Following on from the children’s interest specifically the boys helped to encourage the boys to use the role play, I asked the staff to take a step back and see if the boys would naturally choose  the role play area, they did this by using a tracking observation  from the observation we were able to see that when we adapted the home corner to the children’s interests it encouraged the boys to use it more, providing a continuous provision for both genders can often be difficult especially when there is a higher percentage of a specific gender however following their interests helped overcome this difficulty. Further to this continuously changing the role play area ensured all areas of the EYFS were covered as well as the characteristics of effective learning.

At the end of the project myself and the preschool team sat down and evaluated how effective this project had been, it was decided that each week one member of the team would carry out an observation on the role play area and use this observation to guide practise the following week.  

References

Canning, N. 2011.  Play and Practice in the Early Years Foundation Stage. Ed. Sage. London

Department for Education (DfE), 2014. Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage [Online] accessed 7th April 2016https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/335504/EYFS_framework_from_1_September_2014__with_clarification_note.pdf16

Gray, C & Macblain, S. 2012. Learning Theories in Childhood. Sage. London

Mactague, T. 2014. Boys falling behind girls by the time they are just FIVE... with 40% unable to even write their own name. Online Article. Available through http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2795913/boys-falling-girls-time-just-five-40-unable-write-name.html#ixzz45Y77iEW3   Accessed 7th April 2016