Language, philosophy and books...

We have been reading Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson a lot recently - what with flight connections and witches and dragons fitting in with our talks about fear. The children love the rhyming and have been getting involved by joining in the story - especially completeing the rhymes (and yes it is translated, fairly well, into Swedish - its never quite the same). Today Ellen had made herself a big pointy nose out of paper - and this inspired us to take the book to a new level and act it out - five children helped Ellen act out as I read the story (and there are five eager children waiting to act it out tomorrow). Afterwards the children were encouraged to read and act the book out themselves...

The chairs were placed in a row, as if they were the most magnificent broom, and one of the children "read" from the book. I can't say there was much acting out - but they seemed to enjoy sitting there listening to the abbreviated version of the story.

putting the chairs together to make the most maginificent broom

 Having met the speech therapist this morning, as she observed my group, one child in particular, she congratulated us on our use of story telling, use of rhyme, use of story cards and structured transitions to support the children, especially the ones with language issues - whether pragmatic, or second language, vocabulary or delayed language development - transitions can be a confusing time when verbal language is not explaining fully what is happening...
She was also thrilled with the philosphical dialogues we have with the children - as they not only support language through being very structured (turn-taking is VERY clear) but also supports the children to listen and keep on topic which can be tricky for many children in their language development. AND the fact that ALL the philosphical dialogues are documented word for word means we have an excellent source of material so we can see language development also. She was interested in learning more about philosophy for children as a tool for language development.

Through discussions with her I have got ideas to develop new materials for the group to support their language development - not just the children witha language disorder or (in the case) Swedish as a second langauge - but will in fact support all children in their language development.

I will share with you - as I create... and as we do...

But for now - I am going to return to fixing some photographs ready to put up on the board tomorrow - on Wednesdays is my planning/documenting/reflection time...  So all these images for the blog are also produced for the preschool, minus the "Interaction Imagination" text and not having to blur out faces!!