Pedagogical Documentation

This section contains photos taken throughout my journey thus far of the many experiences and activities I have created and implemented with various age groups. This section is one of my favourites as it highlights so many memories throughout my placement experiences at Humber College. This is also a great place for myself, educators and families to come and get ideas around planning activities for their children to promote their development. It is also important to reflect on past experiences and realize what went well, what could have been improved and what did not work. This allows me to plan experiences that are appropriate and suitable for various children and improve as an educator. Reflection is key to an educator's work and through this page, I can look at past experiences and modify them to better suit various age groups and implement children’s favourite experiences while promoting their developmental success!

STEAM Experience

This was an experience another educator and I created together based on ideas gathered from Pinterest. It focuses on STEAM skills (science, technology, engineering, art and math). We created tubes out of tin foil and washi tape, plastic tubing, pool noodles, and paper towel rolls. The object of this experience was to give children a variety of balls (different sizes and weights) and they had to use the Lego blocks to build a structure that would hold the tubes and carry a ball from one end of the structure to the other with only the lego pieces touching the ground. There are many variations of this experience depending on the age group you do this with. You can time the speed of the balls, see which balls travel faster. Allow children to get creative by giving them colourful blocks to build with. Count how many blocks the children use to create their structure. You can use different-sized blocks. For example, if you have older children doing this experience, you can use small lego pieces to create more of a challenge and focus on fine motor skills. But if you have younger children you can use mega lego blocks or big wooden blocks to focus on gross motor skills. You can even use big wooden lego blocks and bring this experience outside. As an educator I learned many things from the experience, I learned to be resourceful. It was also a great experience having different age groups participated in this experience and getting to see each age group, and each child play, manipulate and experiment with the materials in different ways. It broadened my perspective and allowed me to learn many things about the children I work with. I got to see their abilities and their different creative thought processes as they all created different structures, and even how some of them worked together to create different structures (February 2019).

Sensory Experience

These photos are of my placement students in Junior and Senior Kindergarten making slime. We used glue, food colouring, baking soda, and eye contact solution. We learned how to measure ingredients, and we learned cause and effect. What happens when you make glue with baking soda and eye contact solution? The substance gets harder and harder to mix until it all comes together. The substance starts off sticky but the more you play with it the less sticky it gets. From the photos, you can see that the children stretched, squeezed and kneaded the slim. As an educator, I learned that these children enjoy sensory play. I also learned that they enjoyed making slim so I sent home an ingredient sheet home so they could experiment with making slim at home (March 2020).

Art Experience

This was an experience I did with the children I babysit (ages 9). We used clay and some manipulative tools to create a beach scene. I got to see how creative these children were. They had so many amazing ideas and were able to express themselves through their artwork (July 2018).

Art and Math Experience

This was a simple experience I did with my grade 1 placement students. I laid out some translucent shape tiles on the light board and watched as the children created structures, sorted shapes by shape, and even colours, they even created patterns. The children were extremely excited to share their creations and express themselves (October 2019).

Sensory Experience

I made stress balls with my JK/SK placement students. We used balloons, rice and funnels. We used the funnels to fill the balloons with rice. We tied the rice-filled balloon closed and cut the top off another balloon and put a second ballon over the rice-filled balloon. You can use flour to fill the ballons if you like. The children loved the textures and later used their stress balls to self-regulate (March 2020).

Literacy Experience

For this experience, I cut out random letters from magazines and put them in a bin. I created an alphabet and laid out paper, glue and scissors for the children to create their alphabet and to create phonological awareness (November 2019).

Science and Nature Experience

We used natural resources and loose parts from nature to create boats. We then tested our boat's abilities to float by putting them in the Humber River and seeing if they would float and how are they would travel. This was an excellent science experiment that allowed the children to be creative (August 2019).

Risky Play Experience

A lot of educators and parents shy away from risky play. However, I strongly believe that risky play has a lot of positive impacts on children. It gives them the confidence to explore and discover their skills and abilities to further themselves, just as long as they have supervision (July 2019).

Art Experience

This was a fun art experience the children I babysit created. I cut up lots of shapes from construction paper and found some loose parts they had laying around such as popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, pom-poms, and string. I gave them glue and scissors, I assisted with the use of a hot glue gun, but other than that the children used their creative abilities and expressed themselves in this beautiful nature scene (July 2016).

Art Experience

We made fish puppets out of paper plates which the children painted and added loose parts to. I also cut out some shapes and they glued on the tails and fins. The children were able to express themselves in a creative way (July 2016).

Art Experience

This was a free-play experience. I set out paints, brushes, sponges of various shapes and some loose parts; stickers, strings, popsicle sticks etc. The children came to the station at different times and got creative! They even experimented with finger painting (July 2016).

Spring Art Experience

I did this art experience with 10-year-olds that I was babysitting. We used materials such as popsicle sticks, construction paper, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, paint and egg cartons. I laid out the materials and told the children to create a spring art craft and this is what they came up with. They were able to creatively express themselves and create this craft effectively and collaboratively (April 2018).

Winter Art Experience

This was a craft that my grade 1 cooperating teacher planned and asked me to help execute. The children went on a nature walk and collected pine cones. We returned to the class and helped the children hot glue a ribbon to the top of the pine cone. The children were then able to paint the pine cones and add glitter to them. My cooperating teacher sent these pine cones home as a holiday gift to families (Decemeber 2019).

Literacy Experience

There were many components to this experience. I did this experience with my grade 1 placement class, as well as my preschooler placement students. There are many components to add and take away depending on the age group.

I read the book Career Day by Anne Rockwell which talks about different community helpers and their roles and responsibilities. This gets the children thinking and we start to reflect on what community helpers we see in our community (November 2019).

Literacy and Dramatic Experience

Then we play a matching game where the children have to match the image of the community helper to their title. Followed by using costumes to reenact the community helper's roles and responsibilities. The costumes can be left in the dramatic play centre for children to play with during free play (November 2019).

Literacy Experience

As an extension to reading the Career Day book by Anne Rockwell and I got my grade, 1 placement student, to write a journal about it. They had to select a community helper that we read about, that they liked or even a community helper that they've seen in our community. They drew a picture of the helper and then wrote about their job and responsibility. This extension tied into the grade 1 curriculum of social studies (November 2019).

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