I am going to be starting a new series called Preschool Discovery Tables. This is in huge part to helping my son with his independent play skills (not many here). I have already made one featuring music and it has been a huge hit and still remains in tact upstairs in the playroom. I think it will be a permanent fixture for now! Most will come and go and stay as long as there is interest, but the purpose is to spark some creative/pretend play without needing me to constantly facilitate the play.
I have made discovery tables before, but they often contained to many activities (although nicely presented on shelves) that needed more direction then he could handle on his own. I will save these activities for our table time together instead. I believe that if the table is "workable" for him it will be easier for us to encourage him to play alone without feeling like we really should be there. It will also provide him with a sense of success at being able to manipulate things on his own and hopefully be enjoying enough to try again! In addition these discovery tables do provide a sense of novelty since for the most part they won't be up for all that long but at least a week or two!
Hands On Preschool Dinosaur Play & Learning
Here's our dinosaur themed discovery table to go with our current unit on what else, dinosaurs! I always like to include sensory play, so I have homemade play dough for making fossils or whatever and a craft sand filled with bin with dinosaur bones for excavation. I included lots of dinosaurs for pretend play, books for learning about dinosaurs and a tray with dinosaur magnets to play look at and compare!
These are all easy and open-ended activities for him to explore and discover. I tried to include lots of opportunities for independent play or at least play that didn't need my full support to enjoy! He enjoyed brushing off the bones and sifting through the sand to find all the bones. He pushed the dinosaurs into the clay (I showed him how to ball the dough around them and make "eggs") and he also made a play dough cave! We love books so he looked through them all quite a few times and we read them together. Pretend play is a bit tougher for him but he liked the dinosaur tree house I found at a second-hand store and made the dinosaurs climb around a bit!
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