Welcome to My Play Based Classroom Blog
Hi there!
I'm Janelle - a play-based early years teacher who is super passionate about creating learning experiences that boost curiosity, creativity, and academic growth.
On this blog, I share practical tips for meeting curriculum benchmarks through a balance of explicit teaching and play, setting up the ideal learning environment and fostering social-emotional development.
So, let’s make play-based teaching work in your preschool, kindergarten, or first-grade classroom!
How to Write Open Ended Math Questions
If you are wondering how to write open-ended math questions so you can improve your math instruction, this blog post is for you. Discover everything you need to know before you even start writing and then follow my 3 easy steps on how to write the best open-ended math problems.
A Guide to Play Schemas in Early Childhood Education
If you would like to create an engaging and effective learning environment and confidently plan learning experiences that perfectly match the cognitive development of each child in your class, this blog post on play schemas is for you. Understanding play schemas and being able to pinpoint the ones your students are developing is critical to the success of your early childhood classroom.
How to Write a Play Based Learning Term Overview
If you think curriculum planning and mapping out your term is hard work and you find it a dreaded task that seems to take you forever, you are going to love this blog post on how to write a play-based learning term overview. I’ll show you my quick and easy process.
How to Write Learning Intentions for Kindergarten and Preschool
Are you wondering how to write effective and age-appropriate learning intentions for your preschool or kindergarten classroom? In this blog post you will discover some practical strategies to help you write curriculum aligned learning intentions your kindergarten and preschool children can relate to and use.
How to Build a Classroom Community
Discover what a classroom community is and why you need to be building a classroom community at school. Find out my easy ways to build classroom community and get some tried and tested classroom community building ideas you can use.
Teaching Rhyming Words
If you are wondering why you need to be teaching rhyming words in Preschool or Kindergarten and how to effectively teach the skill of rhyming to your students, this blog post is for you.
Stages of Development - Piaget
Piaget’s theories on cognitive development were groundbreaking for the world of education. To this day, Piagetian theories continue to influence curriculum design and implementation. This blog post will take a close look at Jean Piaget’s Stages of development in children.
The Peace Table
The Peace Table is your solution to managing classroom conflicts effectively. The Montessori-inspired Peace Table teaches children self-regulation and conflict resolution strategies they can use in the classroom and the home to foster inner calm and share peace with others.