Author: Rashida Mohammad

Sorting and matching of colours is simple to set up and will arouse child’s curiosity to play and have fun.

It is a great activity to develop fine motor control, coordination, concentration and learning about colours.

The Playgroup students can now recognize all colours . They are able to sort and match colours and shapes through different kinds of activities.

The caterpillar activity is one of them; in the beginning of the activity children tore red, blue and green coloured paper into small pieces. These bits of paper were set in a tray on the table. In the next process, I showed caterpillar to all children and told them,  “this is a very hungry caterpillar and he wants to eat some food”. Will you help the caterpillar to fill his tummy?” Everyone replied, “Yes!”

I showed them the bits of paper and told them it was the caterpillar’s food. I then pointed to the three circles in his body, each a different colour and said that each circle wanted food matching to its colour. I instructed them to hunt for pieces of paper, sort, match and paste on the appropriate circle, for e.g. blue pieces of paper on blue circles.

The children moved around the classroom excitedly hunting, sorting, matching and finally pasting with glue to feed the caterpillar.

While feeding the hungry caterpillar, the children were able to satiate their need to explore, to compare & contrast, to problem solve and to learn with fun.

Such activities develop a range of thinking skills in young children and build the foundation of later concepts.

Sweeties in the jar sweeties in the jar
shake and rattle, shake and rattle
Sweeties in the jar

The term “design thinking” is frequently used in connection to STEM labs. However, design thinking is bigger than STEM. It begins when you tap into student curiosity and let them to create, test and re-create until they eventually transport what they made to a real audience. Design thinking isn’t a subject or a topic or a class. It’s more of  a way of solving problems that encourages risk-taking and creativity.

In playgroup design thinking is  about assuring the little ones that they can make a difference. Toddlers and preschoolers are naturally curious. They wonder about everything and their ways for problem solving are certainly unique and creative. By inviting these little people into the world of design thinking we are equipping them with a mindset that says: go ahead. Try out your ideas. And just do it. They are empathetic, resilient and caring for each other. Let’s see what happens when design thinking meets Playgroup.

The process started with the rhyme:

Jelly on a plate jelly on a plate
wibbly, wobbly, wibbly, wobbly
Jelly on a plate

Sausages in the pan sausages in the pan
Flip them over flip them over
Sausages in the pan

Sweeties in the jar sweeties in the jar
shake and rattle, shake and rattle

Sweeties in the jar.

Teacher showed them the shake and rattle toy and everyone wanted to play with that toy. On being told that they couldn’t play with it as it belonged to someone else, the children collectively passed through a range of emotions beginning from being upset about it. They were no longer interested in all the class toys placed in front of them. At this moment teacher raised a driving question “We don’t have our own shake and rattle toys in our classroom. That’s a problem. What can we do”? Various responses came up.  “You give us.” “I’ll go to Bacha Party and buy from there.” Then teacher asked them “Can we can make our own toy?”  They were amazed and replied, “Yes, yes, yes!”

Through this process children passed through four stages of “FIDS”, FEEL, IMAGINE, DO & SHARE”.

Children used different objects for creating the sound in their shake and rattle toy and decorated it. They were happy to play with those toys. The class resonated with the buzz and rattle of our newly made shakers as the children shook their toys with all the might in their little arms.