How to guide the children in kindergarten middle class to carry out construction activities

As an educational idea, domain activities were first put forward by Montessori, that is, respecting children's needs and interests, freely combining, adopting different learning methods, contents and progress, and carrying out activities suitable for individual needs. Accordingly, the classroom space is divided into several "activity areas" in which educational activities are completed. In the early 1990s, this regional activity model, which prevailed in the field of preschool education abroad, was introduced to China, which was an "exotic product" for the traditional preschool education in China, which focused on group activities. The characteristics of regional activities are freedom, autonomy, indirectness of guidance and individuality. Compared with collective activities characterized by the directness of control, guidance and guidance and the emphasis on the same sex, they are not only two specific forms of educational organization, but more importantly, they reflect different views on children, education and curriculum design.

Therefore, it is not easy to integrate regional activities into the field of children's education in China, a native of China. Although it entered the kindergarten with collective activities as the main position, it did not fully play its role in essence. Some kindergartens, when making teaching plans, pay more attention to what classes to attend and how to arrange group activities, and rarely or never consider the corresponding regional activities. Even if it was included in the plan, it was not implemented as planned. Some kindergartens regard regional activities as the foreshadowing or extension of collective activities, and fail to fully tap the educational value of regional activities.

How to re-examine kindergarten regional activities with an open and dialogue attitude? How to fully tap and play the educational value of regional activities? These are all issues that need to be considered. There are 27 children in my class (big class), including 22 boys, who are almost "obsessed" with architectural activities. Some problems in the construction of activity areas are * * * problems in regional activities, so this paper chooses the construction of activity areas as the starting point to talk about our exploration of teacher guidance strategies in regional activities.

First, the space-time strategy of regional activities.

First of all, the regional space should be adjusted and expanded according to the needs, and the idle space should be effectively used to improve the congestion situation. In terms of regional layout, our garden tends to be "divided around and left blank in the middle", that is, the classroom is divided into regions and corresponding materials are put in. Each area is separated by low cabinets, and a large space is reserved in the center of the classroom for group activities. However, it is often faced with the situation that children in some areas rarely enter, which leads to idleness. In some areas, children like it very much and it is too crowded, and the blank in the center is also idle. How to solve the problem of coexistence of space waste and space shortage? We try to break geographical boundaries, expand closed geographical space, and extend regional activities to the center or other corners of the classroom as needed.

The number of children that can be accommodated in the building activity area is limited, and more children can only choose other areas, so it is impossible to occupy the space of other areas when arranging the areas. In order to solve this problem, we have taken the following measures: subdividing the construction activity area into building area and splicing area. The building area is located outside the corridor, mainly for transporting wood blocks, supplemented by other wastes; There is a splicing area in the classroom, but there is only a low cabinet for placing materials, and no specific boundaries are set. Children who want to join can bring their own mats, choose their own building materials and choose their own locations, and extend the regional space to the center of the classroom and some idle areas. Make full use of indoor space to meet children's activities.

Secondly, in the arrangement of regional activities, the way of "combining institutionalization with flexibility" is adopted to respect children's learning process. Because large class children face primary school, group activities occupy a large part of the time, and the time for regional activities is only half an hour every day. Time constraints make us face such a problem: the children just "gradually get better" in the activity area, and it didn't take long for the teacher to announce that "time is up", so the children had to reluctantly pack up and leave and come back the next day. Obviously, the prescribed regional activity time is far from meeting children's activity needs, but the schedule of kindergartens is institutionalized and cannot be easily changed. How to solve this problem? We try to organically combine collective activities with regional activities to realize the effectiveness and purpose of regional activities under the theme background.

For example, in the theme activity of "My Class", some children suggested to build our class in the activity area, which was approved by most children and they were eager to try. At this time, the teacher saw that the interest point of children's activities had shifted, so he adjusted the teaching plan according to the children's needs, ended the group activities ahead of schedule, guided the children to implement the ideal of "building classes" step by step, and combined several preset contents such as "painting classes" and "class slogans" with the children's interests, and put them into group regional activities for infiltration. Through discussion, the children thought of drawing pictures and signs before Gai Lou, so they spontaneously divided into groups. The art group designs the class sketch, the language group designs the signs and slogans, and finally the building activity group builds the design class according to the "drawings". Through group cooperation, the children experienced the process of operation, construction and design and realized their original ideas.

Second, the environment and material arrangement strategy of regional activities

Creating a positive and suitable regional environment is the basis for the smooth development of children's regional activities. Our architectural activity area is adjacent to the role area, and the art area is connected with the natural corner. The adjacent arrangement of related regional spaces is helpful to stimulate the interaction and communication of related activities. In addition, in terms of material arrangement, we pay attention to the following points:

First of all, it is our focus to understand the function and educational value of materials and the core educational value of regional activities. Taking the construction of activity area as an example, in order to let children play with building blocks, teachers must have enough knowledge of building blocks, personally experience the difficulties that children may encounter in the process of building and experiencing, and analyze the key experiences contained in different building activities, so as to be aware of them. Only in this way can they freely arrange and arrange the building activity area and give appropriate guidance when facing problems.

1924, CarolinePratt, an American educator, designed and invented a set of building blocks, which we called "UniteBlock", and our garden was equipped with this kind of unit building block. It is characterized by maintaining the primary color of wood and designing "basic block", "double block" and "four block" in an accurate proportion. The height and width of these three building blocks are the same, and the length is increasing exponentially. Subsequently, 38 kinds of unit building blocks such as arc, cylinder, triangle, fork, semi-arch and double arch were added.

Sufficient activities need sufficient materials, sufficient operations and sufficient time, and construction activities are an important learning activity. In the process of stacking, stacking, disassembling and building, children use a variety of senses to explore things, understand the internal relations between things in the process of operation, obtain preliminary three-dimensional space and mathematical concepts, know different geometric shapes, and learn to pair. When they build their own world, they will get a sense of accomplishment. They can also play role games and reflect real life through thinking and creation. It can be said that the magic of building blocks in the activity area lies in providing children with integrated learning methods and tools, which are operational, artistic, creative and exploratory.

Secondly, grasp the strategy of selecting, putting in and using materials, and give full play to the "living" value of materials. Regional materials are the media for children's development, and selecting, putting in and changing active materials is one of the guiding strategies for teachers to influence children's behavior and support children's learning and development.

Taking the building activity area as an example, building materials are the material guarantee for developing building games. Our class provides suitable materials for children's building activities in quantity and variety, not only for children's finished toys such as building blocks, plastic animals, cars, trains and tracks, but also for the actual situation, providing sufficient, safe and hygienic waste materials. Diversified materials enrich the content and form of regional activities and stimulate children's creativity and conception.

The source of waste materials is mainly collected by children and teachers. By organizing children to discuss "Where do waste materials come from?" "What can waste be used for?" Help children broaden their horizons and other topics, and think that collecting waste materials is an interesting job: washing sour milk bottles is the pillar needed to build activity areas; After drinking the milk at home, the remaining cartons can be used to build a "castle"; Newly bought household appliances, packaging foam boards can be used as building balconies ... because these materials are collected by children themselves, they also cherish them and consciously pack them up after playing. In the art district, everyone handles the waste to make it more suitable for use in the building activity area. For example, bricks made of cigarette cases, columns made of potato chips, stairs made of toothpaste boxes, street lamps made of jelly shells, flower beds made of cake plates and so on. It has become a must-have "treasure" created by children.

When we put in the materials, we studied the educational goals and values contained in each material. By observing the performance and experience of children's usual activities, building materials are put in layers to make the architectural works vivid and make the children's architectural level develop to a higher level.

When children are building an overpass, they need to build a slope, but they can't find the material to support it. After several failed experiences, children's interest in building slopes weakened. The teacher saw the limitations of the existing materials in time and took out "dominoes" for the children to choose. In a short time, they came up with a way to build dominoes into the shape of stairs, and then put the road on it obliquely to make a slope for cars to pass freely, thus solving the "technical problem".

In addition, when there is a shortage of materials in the construction, the teacher will remind the children what materials can be used instead, and how to replace them can also achieve results. By skillfully using auxiliary materials, children can learn to explore boldly and use one thing for multiple purposes, which not only improves the building level, but also cultivates the ability to solve problems.

Third, the guiding strategy of regional activities.

Paying attention to the accumulation of children's life experience and guiding children to observe life experience in an orderly manner are the basis of children's regional activities, and we should also pay attention to the accumulation of children's life experience in daily life. Taking the construction of activity area as an example, children are usually guided to observe things in a certain logical order, such as from top to bottom, from near to far, from whole to detail, and observe the shape, color and structure of objects, thus forming the habit of carefully observing things around them. If you look at the "bridge", look at the pictures of various bridges first. Different bridges have different shapes, such as arch bridge, overpass, cable bridge, storm bridge and pontoon bridge. Different materials, such as stone, wood and concrete; The structure and combination are also different. Through observation, let children perceive the names and shapes of various parts of the bridge, and guide them to think about which building blocks to replace which parts of the bridge, and how to express the structural characteristics and combination relationship of the bridge with building blocks.

Grasping children's age characteristics, naturally intervening in the activity process and giving appropriate guidance, the overall guidance teacher can only guide skillfully on the basis of understanding and respect if he deeply analyzes the content of regional activities, children's age characteristics, learning characteristics and original experience. The children in the big class have some experience in building, paying more attention to details and being creative. They began to consider layout, which can make the structure of objects more complex, detailed and symmetrical, and can discuss, divide and cooperate with peers. On this basis, teachers can pay attention to the transmission and application of experience. However, due to the openness and dynamics of regional activities, teachers' on-site guidance in regional activities needs higher skills, which should be based on expectations, comprehensive consideration and flexible.

Before regional activities, it is necessary to clarify the theme of construction and let children know the layout, division of labor and order of construction activities. The theme can be discussed by children themselves, or decided by teachers and children through discussion, and valuable content can be filtered out from activities that children are interested in. It can be a theme that is inseparable from children's lives: "the community I live in" and "our space base"; You can also build localized themes, such as the Great Wall. There is no concern for children for the time being, but valuable preset activities should be transformed into activities that children are interested in through various channels.

In the process of construction activities, due to the complexity of the construction process, the requirements for intelligence and motor skills are higher. If there is no guidance, children may lose confidence due to lack of operational skills, give up building activities or stay in a low-level game state for a long time. Therefore, teachers should observe children's activities, make clear the direction of guidance, set progressive and constructive questions, naturally conduct random education, give appropriate guidance and conduct overall guidance on the basis of understanding children's construction level.

After the regional activities, children can make a self-evaluation. For example, children can talk about what they made, with whom, and what difficulties they overcame when they made it, which not only satisfied children's desire to express themselves, enhanced their self-confidence, but also developed their language skills. If it is a group evaluation under the guidance of teachers, we should be good at capturing and commenting on the valuable contents of most children's development and enhancing the educational value contained in the evaluation. For example, when the teacher was evaluating the shape of the "space base", many children scrambled to say what they had built. After the teacher asked in turn, he said, "No wonder it's so great! So you cooperate well! " The brief evaluation made all the children realize the importance of cooperation. You can also guide children to appreciate the works, record their construction works with maps, and take pictures of their achievements and post them in the construction activity area.

Using peer resources to guide the division of labor and cooperation, it is easier for * * * to communicate with peers who have completed tasks than between teachers and children. As long as one or two children in a group have a high level of construction, the construction skills of this group can be improved quickly. Children's ability to learn from each other is very prominent in construction activities. Children in large classes tend to build games in groups, and children in large classes can even unite to design and build complex shapes. At this time, teachers should be able to use peer resources in time, guide the division of labor and cooperation, and jointly complete the construction work.

Mutual acceptance between peers is the guarantee of successful cooperation, but when playing games with each other, they have their own ideas. When there is a dispute between them, they must make concessions and settle the dispute through consultation, because there is no absolute authority between them. Learn to look at problems from the perspective of others, enhance children's sensitivity to the influence of their actions on others, and thus promote positive peer relations. But sometimes children don't have enough ability to solve conflicts, and need the guidance of teachers, which can not only solve conflicts properly, but also promote the development of peer relationship.

In short, through grasping the characteristics of children's age and observing children's activities carefully, through studying the space and time arrangement of regional activities, and through the practice of selecting and putting in regional activities materials, teachers have adopted relevant follow-up strategies to adjust educational behavior and related areas in time, thus promoting the continuous enrichment and deepening of regional activities. Let children learn to share and cooperate in the game atmosphere of negotiation, humility, sharing and exchange of resources, and experience success and frustration, so as to realize the harmonious and all-round development of children's personality.