sure, love to By Stacia

Great questions, that may be.

I have play centers set up in the classroom,
housekeeping, blocks, art, publishing, library, letters, math, logic, spatial, reflective center and sand or water.

I go by a specific definition of play. Play has to be intrinsically motivated, freely chosen, symbolic, active, and meaningful.

During play, the children are free to use any of these centers. The centers are designed with materials that reflect five levels of play (sensory, motor, cognitive manipulative, creative expressive, and language mediated (or games with rules)- and that reflect the various intelligence strengths that children may have. It is important that children reach the language mediated levels of play in order to be ready for formal adult symbol system presentation.

Materials are also in each center to build on all of the intelligences, or as many as I can facilitate through that center.

For example in the housekeeping area,
we may have been talking about community helpers in an interpersonal activity (social studies topic), we have have been talking about money in math, and i may have presented letters b and s in a linguistic activity. So in housekeeping, I have community dress up clothes and I may make sure to use a restaurant theme. I have realistic looking play money to reflect what we have talked about so far and additional coinage. I would then have foods and menu items that would begin with letters b and s. I would have materials to make play menus, tablets for taking orders, and etc. The children that would go to the housekeeping area, they might begin the restaurant theme - (because of the props there). I might come over and say, how do you know what to order at the restaurant? They would say menus and I would encourage them to look thorugh the play food and create their menu - they would use their knowledge of phonics to create the menus. I would facilitate the sounds and etc. IT's a very involved process. Then they would pay for their items with their play money, count the change, etc.

In a nutshell, I give them tools to use what we have been talking about during the activity portion of the day (or direct instruction part of the day) to use and develop those skills in context. What usually happens is they not only use those skills we have presented, but they build upon that information from their peers, by asking questions, by the addition of other props, by my facilitation, etc. The children are choosing what centers to play with, I have chosen specific materials to reflect what we are learning or what we want to learn. I also have exploratory things set up as well - science experiments, math games, some montessori equipment, etc. If I see a child particularly interested in one of these, then I plan specific activities to extend upon and draw from that interest.

My linguistic play area might include the shape of a letter we are working in, light brite to make the letter, sand to trace the letter, playdough to make the shape of the letter, word games, books, letter boxes (with materials children have collected that begin with a certain letter) listening center, etc.