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Shadow Puppets Activity:
• the age group of the learners: 3-5 years
• the purpose of the learning experience: children to create drawings using shapes, texture, lines, colours
• materials/ environment: sunny outdoors or indoors with strong light source,
paper, scissors, crayons, sticks

This photo accentuating shadows in The Parallaxis reminded me of a time when an educator introduced shadow puppets to the class. I intend to recreate this experience for early childhood children.
Firstly, introduce to children that shadow puppets were first used in China to tell stories. Educators are to demonstrate with their own hand made shadow puppet that the image is smaller the farther the puppets are from the light source and they grow bigger when brought closer to the light source (this can be done against the wall where the sun is shining).
Children are invited to make up their own stories by creating different shadow characters. This can be achieved through drawing a variety of animals or still objects and cutting them out then attaching the drawing to a stick for children to play with.
This demonstrates that children can create images using shape, colour, texture and lines (texture can be achieved by poking holes through the paper or cutting their character in zig zag formations). Children are encouraged to perform a live puppet show of their own fiction story to families and peers. This activity could be used to expanded further by having children follow a story and re-enacting the folktale to their own understanding, inviting their ‘interpretations and reconstructions of what happened in the past’ (Edwards, Gandini & Forman 2011, p. 228’).

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Life Cycle of a Tree Activity:

·       the age group of the learners: 3-5 years

·       the purpose of the learning experience: children to understand the growth and life cycle of trees through dance

·       materials: none

I was inspired by this photo in Parallaxis of the tree to draw on the topics of plant life cycles for young children. My suggested activity is to look at the theme of plants. The dance would be led by the educator guiding a group of early childhood children to explore and develop the knowledge and ideas about the life cycle of a tree whilst refining their movement skills.

Educators could play a soft musical instrument in the background and first show that all trees start off as a seed, by placing themselves in the fetal position, the children are to imitate. Following the life cycle, the educator would represent themselves as a sapling and could be sitting on the ground with their legs crossed. The next step of the life cycle is the growth of a small tree, educators are encouraged to kneel on their knees, representing the height of a developing tree. With sufficient water, nutrients and sunlight, a big mature tree would reap, where educators would stand on both legs, swaying their arms as if they were big branches. Through this interactive activity, young children would be introduced to the life cycle of plants where ‘the teachers [are] participating in the production of new knowledge’ while a child’s learning is being transformed into something physical (Edwards, Gandini & Forman 2011, p. 228’). This activity could be furthered by beginning to plant their own seeds in the classroom, providing children with real time examples of the developmental stages of a plant.

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Vocabulary Musical Chairs Activity:
• the age group of the learners: 3-5 years
• the purpose of the learning experience: children to demonstrate their understanding of a word
• materials: equal ratio of chairs to players, paper, markers, vocabulary words relating to the topic at hand (e.g.: sounds, instruments)

This chair I came across on the Parallaxis reminded me of the remaining winner in a game of musical chairs. I have shifted this classic game into a vocabulary lesson for children to display their knowledge of topic terms.

Method:
The chairs are to be positioned in a circle. On each chair, a piece of paper with a different letter, shape, sight word or vocabulary word will be placed on the seat.  The educator is to ask the children to move, rotating from chair to chair when the music plays.  When the music stops, the child stops and faces the chair they are in front of and explains the vocabulary term in their own words. For example, if the topic was sounds, and the word “loud” was placed in front of a student, the student would give a brief description of what loud means. They might answer that loud means lots of yelling or a big noise to describe the term loud.  Each child will answer to their vocabulary words.

This activity could cater to a variety of topics including Indigenous perspectives, for example, if the word “wominjeka” was on the chair, the child would translate that to welcome in English. The activity is played again for several rotations.

This activity is a form of active listening that ‘builds on a serious engagement and inquisitiveness in the here-and-now event’ (Edwards, Gandini & Forman 2011, p. 226) providing educators with insights of where the children are at with their learning and illustrates where they are struggling or succeeding.