GEKA Centre Road
Strong, confident and involved learners
By Rochelle Ancora
Working with both 3 and 4 year old groups, we have the privilege of watching all the children grow and develop in confidence during their time at kindergarten. From the first few weeks at kindergarten where children are getting to know each other and their surroundings to the end of their one or two years together.
One aspect I love about my work is that I get to watch each child develop in self-confidence and learn to challenge themselves in play.
As an educator, I like to ask children what they like to do and prompt children to think of a way to challenge their play both mentally and physically. At kindergarten, we like to set up many different play experiences for children to challenge themselves in a safe and nurturing environment. With a large range of indoor and outdoor experiences, sometimes these experiences can be more challenging than others for children as they might not have done anything like it before. As an educator we get to introduce these new experiences and provide encouragement to help each child feel safe and supported in their learning environment and become strong, confident, and involved learners. There are also times where children have a lot of confidence and like to seek out further risks and challenges in play at every opportunity.
Risky play looks different for everyone. For this reason, we like to begin each child’s learning journey by getting to to know each child; their interests, likes and dislikes, what sensory and physical activities they engage in and what things children might shy away from. Making these connections is important to what we do.
As the whole educational team get to know each other better, we all build a connection of trust and with each child and we can help introduce new activities and add a level of challenge or risk into their play.
Some physical risky play experiences we like to encourage at kindergarten are:
- Climbing and jumping from different heights
- Climbing over frames and ladders with various levels of difficulty
- Challenging our thoughts of how to move our bodies to achieve a new goal like moving a balance board or rolling in a large barrel
- Thinking of ways to move up or down the slide (headfirst, on our tummy, sliding backwards)
- Creating your own challenging obstacles course to further challenge yourself and think creatively of how and where to move to problem solve and challenge their unique individual physical skills.
- Sliding down the fireman pole.
However, there are also other risks in other play that sometimes we can overlook. At kinder we like to use real equipment, like glass cups for drinking, knives for cooking, lighting candles for our group times, using hammers to tinker with, scissors for craft and shovels to dig and make a world of sensory play (messy mud pools) in the mud patch.
For some children risky for them is experiencing levels of sensory play. This can be as simple as a child who doesn’t like getting their feet wet or dirt to playing with slime or finder painting. Using real equipment provides an opportunity for children to learn the challenges and risks of how to respect equipment and problem solve the hazards or what might be dangerous and how they can approach these hazards to use them and have them in our daily activities.
Throughout each child's kindergarten experience, the risky play activities provide opportunities for children to grow self-confidence and build a sense of emotional resilience. Watching children try new things (sometimes needing to try them a few times before gaining the confidence to do independently) we feel a strong sense of pride in how we can help children build the lifelong benefits of what we have introduced to them through play.
With the many different interests and levels of confidence we like to encourage all children to be a curious in their learning environment and over their time at Kindergarten, develop strong self-identities to challenge themselves, take risks and to engage and embrace the world around them.
