This resource is a compilation of activities and ideas from teachers at our centres, from books, and found online. It is meant to support educators in thinking of, designing, and implementing activities in the classroom.
It is important to note that this resource is NOT a curriculum. It is NOT required that activities in this compilation be followed exactly. Rather, the goal is to provide a starting point, or ideas when teachers feel stuck or students are uninspired.
The creative partner of this resource, Parkland Players, is a Reggio Emilia Childcare Centre. That means that provocation and child-directed learning are central. Follow children’s interests first and foremost, and use this Activities Resource as a supporting tool. Strive to keep activities open-ended, be flexible with themes and projects, allow for children’s input on how to implement activities and listen to what students need in order to learn.
This resource is formatted based on monthly and weekly themes following the school year from September to June with additional content for July and August. The resource is divided into months. Each month is further subdivided into weekly themes that relate to the overarching theme for that month or related to special holidays or scheduled events in that month.
The overall goal of the organization of this Activities Resource is to easily flow from one topic to another throughout the school year and to build on previous knowledge in order to approach new topics as the year continues. In each month there are five weeks of material. The weeks do not need to be done in the order they are presented if educators feel as though a different order suits their schedule better. Often there will only be four weeks in the actual month rather than five. In this case educators need not always sacrifice Week 5 they may select whichever week they would prefer not to do, or can combine material from two weeks into one.
TOOLS
The calendar is meant to provide a quick look at the topics and activities for a given month. This is also the homescreen, you are able to select different views from this screen such as “list view” or “week”.
This document is meant to offer ideas that can be completed on and off continuously throughout the month. The activities are meant to be used in the background to other tasks and often Long Term Projects focus on learning new and interesting skills (ex. knitting), or are meant to provoke thought and creativity regarding a specific theme (ex. design challenges), or they are meant to encourage collaboration and teamwork among children (ex. mural projects).
These are the actual activities for each week. They can be accessed by clicking on any given activity in the calendar view. These sheets provide a title for the activity, the domain of learning it applies to (explanation of domains of learning to follow) and an objective for learning for that individual activity. Most of the time, any paper materials required for the activity will be immediately following the instructions (ex. A template or wordsearch). There will also often be a picture from the source site to give an idea of what the finished product looks like.