Perth, April 5 2020
Day 14 of #Covid19 #Socialdistance
Today, on the last Sunday before Easter, we decided to go traditional and we made a dove, symbol of peace and harmony.
We cut and coloured a dove shaped piece of carton, and made hand-shaped wings on a thin paper and coloured them rainbow style.
While we were waiting for white colour on the dove shape to dry, we had an idea on how we can learn the basic principles of coding.
We used the hand-shaped wings as a reference, and got a piece of green paper from a flyer
We had a chat about the fact that computers follow the instructions that we give them, most often long series of simple instructions, and then we practiced what it would be like if we were computers.
Our first pretend game consisted of the following instructions:
1 For each finger in the hand-shaped wings
2 cut a leave from the green paper
So we went counting: finger 1, cut 1 leave, finger 2, cut 1 leave and so on. We cut 10 leaves.
Our second pretend game was:
1 Stick the first leave to the branch
2 For each leave
3 if previous leave on the left, then stick it to the right
4 otherwise stick it to the left
So we said:
leave 1 , stick it;
leave 2: is the previous on the left? No, so stick it to the left;
leave 3: is the previous on the left? Yes, then stick it to the right;
etc.
And that's how we made the olive tree branch, to put in the mouth of the dove.
From our third pretend game, a crescendo of fun started.
1 For each finger in the hand-shaped wings
2 shout out its colour
1 For each finger in the hand-shaped wings
2 if the finger is yellow, then sing happy birthday
3 otherwise run to the end of the house and then back
We played this like:
finger 1 (pointing at finger 1): is it yellow? No, then let's run!
finger 2 (pointing at finger 2): is it yellow? No, then let's run!
And so on
1 For each finger in the hand-shaped wings
2 if the finger is a thumb, then play ring-a-ring-a-rosy
3 otherwise run to the end of the house and then back
1 For each hand-shaped wing
2 sing Miss Polly had a Dolly
We got quite tired running all these times around the house, did some good physical activity to keep us fit, and learnt something about sequences of instructions and about breaking actions into simple instructions.
I would not push this further for a 3 year old, but there is a lot more that can be built up on this activity for older children.
Obviously, by the time we finished the dove shape was dry and so we assembled our artwork together.
Learning outcomes:
set up and follow sequences of instructions
break actions into simple instructions
fine motor skills with the cut, paste etc.
Materials: cartons, colours, white paper, green paper, glue.
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