Building Cooperative Play Skills with Sand and Water Part 1
My students need a water/sand table to build social relationships and encouraging problem solving skills through cooperative play and sharing. Water/sand tables also help students practice eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills.
I have the pleasure of teaching 20 preschool students’ ages 3 to 5 in a full day integrated classroom. We have 8 students identified with delays and 12 students without delays. We are a public school located in an urban low poverty diverse community.
Our students want learning to be fun and hands on.
Our goal is to keep the students moving and motivated through play and open ended hands-on activities of their interest. We help the students build social relationships by encouraging the students to create, problem solve, and work together through cooperative play and sharing.
My Project
Students playing with sand and water are practicing eye-hand coordination and using fine motor skills to scoop, sift, funnel, and pour. Social and emotional skills are built in the sand and water center providing important opportunities for children to practice cooperative play and sharing.
Adding STEM and inquiry activities to the sand and water tables will partner students up to gather information, build knowledge, and teacher other.
STEM and inquiry activities are hands on, investigating, and encourage the students to learn through play, problem solving, creativity, discovery, and open ended exploration.
Math, science, and language skills can also be taught using the sand and water table. We can add fishing identification activities using letters, shapes, and number to the water table. Students will use their math and science skills by adding a waterway pipe builders to the water table. Students can use letter molds to mold their name in the sand. And castle molds will enhance student’s math skills and figuring out how to mold the sand increases their science skills.
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