Planning for outdoor play for young children

Just want to share my planning for outdoor play for my 3 year-olds.

Meanwhile, I am reading a UK document about early years outdoor learning to be better informed. Click this link if interested. 

Outdoor learning of young children

My 3 year-olds enjoy playing and learning outdoors. I think parents would like to know the value of outdoor learning. So I share the information in the parent journal. Below are some examples.

Passion for outdoor play in the early years

The outdoors is a unique place, it is not the same as indoors. Young children will not be the same outdoors as when they are indoors. In the beginning of the year, I decided to start the session inside first, which made it easier for supervision. In Melbourne, one teacher and one co-educator work with a group of 20 children. While I need to greet and welcome at the gate, my co-educator have to be on her own with the children for around 10 minutes, until most children have arrived and then I come back to join her.

However, I noticed that a few children found it easier to find something to do when they were outside. A young boy felt comfortable when staying with the kinder rabbit. His grandmother always prepared some cut carrot strips for him to feed the rabbit, which had become his ritual. A girl, who has been confident and competent in climbing up and down the playground equipments, simply sat down looking into the emptiness when she was inside. Also, there were two boys who kept running around...

So, I decided to make a change and start the session outside, weather permitting. Since the change, I noticed a big improvement in the level of children's engagement. Previously, it took 45 minutes for everyone to settle down and be involved in an activity; and now everyone seem to be happy within the first 20 minutes. Also, when they move back from outside to inside, the children seem to be calmer.

It's true that the outdoors is a deeply engaging , special place for young children, where they are able to experience freedom as well as challenge themselves. when outdoors, children have room to be active, noisy, and messy.

My next post will cover some planning about my outdoor play.

Planning for Mother's Day with young children

Mother's day is coming up, and I think it's an opportunity to showcase the strengths and interest of the 3 year-olds. They absolutely like working with playdough. Some children always stayed at the playdough table for sustained periods of time. On the days when I did not set up the playdough, a few children would requested for it; and once a child tried to climb up to reach for the playdough container. They are skilful with playdough, rolling it nice and flat with the rolling pin, and they are able to cut the dough into various shapes tidily. So, my plan is to let children make some dough shapes, probably heart or star, which will be a pendant for a necklace for Mum.

I will upgrade the art activity with a focus on maths learning. This group of 3 year-olds are "young mathematicians". They love to use numbers and count. When I announce,
" packing up will be in 2 minutes,"  and some will negotiate, "4 minutes!...8 minutes?" At snack time, a child who always finishes his food quickly will offer to count how many children at each table. It's probably his excuse to walk away from his chair and move around, as they are encouraged to remain seated to wait for everyone to finish. Yes, cooking and measuring ingredients is naturally a meaningful way to use numbers and measuring tool. In addition, I will use a "child friendly" recipe with numerals and pictures to draw the young children's attention to numbers and counting. They are going to "read" the recipe:

I adjust the quantity of the recipe to 20 children in my group. We will make the dough together. The children are going to count the pictures of the measuring cup to find out how much flour is needed. We will talk about what does a "half" means. The picture recipe is clearly illustrative and "readable".

Also, the activity can't be finished in one session, as the baked pendant shape needs to be cool down before it is painted and varnished. The young children will learn to re-visit an activity and that a project will require longer time to complete. it's about perseverance.

Let you know how it goes later! 

If you want to give it a go, write me some feedback.

Documenting and celebrating mark making of young children

I used learning stories to document and celebrate children's efforts in mark making. I think this kind of documentation serves multiple purposes: letting the child know his effort and initiative are valued; providing a basis for reflection when reading the story with family/teacher/on his own;and reporting to parents regarding the child's experiences and learning at kindergarten. I believe a learning story is a pedagogical documentation; and it is about supporting the child in his learning.

Below are two learning stories. Both stories refer to the national curriculum of Australia, the Early Years learning framework, which informs the parents about the teacher's practice. Also, parents are invited to give feedback, which highlights the partnerships with families. 

Supporting mark making in the early years

I noticed that my three-year-olds are interested in making marks. Two girls sang while they were drawing together on a piece of paper. They seemed to be exploring lines, colours, forms as well as rhythm. Some children were draw marks to depict dinosaurs, with bold colours and lines, probably to express the energy of their favourite T-Rex?

First planning that came to my mind was the environment, both indoor and outdoor environments, which enabled children to practise mark making through spontaneous opportunities for involvement. I believe the environment should offer a wide variety of possibilities for exploring and learning, providing both new challenges and familiar settings so that children develop confidence and skills. Specifically,

• plenty of opportunities to try new experiences, such as making marks outside in the sand, making books and greeting cards; exploring new resources such as whiteboard/blackboard/clipboards, colour pencils, felt-tip…
• mark-making resources to be carefully chosen, well organised and attractively presented, so that children can decide independently how they want to represent their ideas and which medium would best suit their purpose.When resources are attractively displayed, children’s curiosity will be aroused and they will be tempted to try and be involved in new experiences
• displaying pictures of dinosaurs around to inspire more drawing

Second thing on my planning was communication with my colleague to ensure consistent responses to children's interests and emerging skills. In Melbourne, the 3-year-olds teacher works alongside a co-educator with a group of 20 children. The teacher and the co-educator need to be on the same page to look out for "teachable moments" to extend the learning of children. So, the co-educator needs to be aware that mark making is a valuable learning activity for young children. 

Thirdly, the parents should be well informed. I will share a couple of learning stories on mark making in the next post.

Inspired by "Mark Making Matters"

The 3-year-olds have been passionately drawing with crayons at the collage table and at the easel with paint. True, they are too young to draw something easily recognisable, however, the marks they made are not random. The young children are experimenting with expressing themselves with marks.

‘Scribbles are products of a systematic investigation, rather than haphazard actions’.John Matthews (1999), The Art of Childhood and Adolescence: The Construction of Meaning 

I know my responsibility to celebrate and support mark making, so I research on the topic in order to enrich for my planning. I discovered Mark Making Matters from the UK.


First step is to inform the parents, my partners in supporting children in their learning. I displayed some works of children on the wall, with explanation about the values of mark making:

Through their marks, they are communicating their ideas, expressing their feelings, developing their imagination and creativity, and testing their hypotheses about the world. These opportunities for making ‘thinking visible’ are fundamental to children’s learning and development and should be the entitlement of every child.

Sometimes marks are made for the pure physical enjoyment of the activity – the feel of the crayon and felt-tip pen as they glide over the surface of paper, or the sight of the brightly-coloured dribbles of paint as they spread over… On these occasions, the physical activity is an end in itself and an opportunity for young children to experiment and explore with their senses, developing confidence, physical coordination and dexterity through the process.

I copied off from Mark Making Matters. I have to because as a 3-year-old teacher in Australia, I simply have no office time to do documentation. A little complain here. You will know if you teach in Australia. If you are from other parts of the world, I will talk about that in later posts.