As a teacher, it can be tough finding ways to develop these essential but esoteric principles through basic activities in the classroom, especially when working within the constraints of a traditional educational setting that appears at times to be engaged in instilling exactly the opposite by delivering a curriculum that can be successfully negotiated by individual rote-learning.
It’s the challenge of delivering experiences in which the child can learn through content, rather than simply memorizing content without the associated ability of knowing when or how to apply it.
Luckily, facilitated multiplay experiences in the classroom can go a long way to developing progressive principles in a child, while simultaneously helping you deliver your traditional curriculum. Well-facilitated games can tap into a number of key skills-development areas and inspire a deeper form of learning in a social setting that perfectly dovetails with progressive educational aims.
This allows the development of critical thinking to begin immediately, in your classroom, rather than at the later stages of a child’s life. As the majority of children never go to university, the benefits of educating in a way that’s rooted in the immediate development of the conceptual and critical manipulation of the lived experience is obvious.
Gathering a core set of teaching and learning aids that engenders progressive learning while helping you hit your traditional curriculum goals can be challenging. Luckily, Miniland has developed a range of educational toys that support you to create the empowering classroom experience any developing child needs. These toys are designed to suit your pocket: they’re all robustly designed to survive the rigors of child’s play, and can serve across a range of ages and developmental levels as cross-curricular support.
With one key purchase you have an aid you can use in multiple settings with many ages, and as a focus point through which cross-curricula content can be delivered in a differentiated classroom. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, here are three ways the Miniland educational toys perform their magic, supporting you to hit your goals and educate future-proof independent thinkers:
They focus on experiential learning
Learning through a lived experience is the best way to remember content, and to practice working with that knowledge in context. Games such as Creative Nature or Water Mystery do this perfectly, making scientific discovery an activity that could easily happen inside the classroom or outside surrounded by the phenomena they focus on.
They inspire lifelong learning by developing a mindset, not only skills
Programs like Mindful Kids help you develop self-awareness in your classroom. With one multi-purpose tool, you can host 36 activities based on nature, culture and everyday situations that allow children to learn self-awareness and emotional regulation through content. This develops a useful grounding in an expansive, self-reflexive mindset that supports the principles of progressive education while covering the content of traditional curricula effortlessly.
Develop multiple intelligences
Each of Miniland’s toys help to develop a number of intelligences at any one time. The choice, as a teacher, is simply where to focus at any one time. They specialize in educational toys that cater for a multiplay experience that caters simultaneously to the development of more than one of the following intelligences: emotional, social, logical, kinaesthetic, linguistic and visuospatial. For example, playing the game Barbeque Emotions! allows children the ability to develop emotional intelligence, social intelligence and linguistic ability, all in one go!
Walking the line between the demands of a traditional curriculum and progressive educational aims has never been easier, and Miniland is the teacher’s assistant you’ve been looking for. Take a look at our catalog today and let us help you skill the future progressively, without breaking your budget.
