Early literacy skills

Recently the children have been showing a lot of interest in books and story-telling props such as the puppets and small toys. A few weeks ago I made a set of 5 ducks and attached Velcro to the backs of them in order for them to be placed on the walls or carpet boxes. Theses have proven themselves to be very popular with the older children who sit with me as I sing songs using them, but also for all the children to choose to independently sit and pull them off or stick them on. Even pull them off and transport the ducks to another area of the room. I was watching Olivia the other day, who chose to experiment with different places that the ducks could stick to. Through trial and error, she discovered that the Velcro ducks do not stick to a painted door or the side of a chair, but sometimes they may stick to her hair. When I noticed what she was doing, I verbalised what was happening, using the phrases, “I can see you are trying to put the ducks up. Do you think they will stick to the door? No, they slide off the door/chair. They are on your head. They stick to the wall…”etc. I didn’t want to interrupt her exploration with songs as it didn’t seem to be what she was interested in. She seemed more focused on the mechanics of the ducks sticking to different mediums. I believe that my response to this situation demonstrated dimension 16- demonstrates flexibility and responsiveness. I chose not to place my agenda onto what Olivia was doing; rather I followed her and added to her own experiences.