Parents can learn a lot about the concept of ‘learning through play’ when engaging in a play activity themselves. Another good activity to exemplify this is the ‘I spy’ game. The game encourages players to observe, and use language to describe what they see.

During the session, you could engage parents in one or two variations of the ‘I Spy’ game. When engaging in this activity, parents will use their observation skills, and they will hear and use descriptive language and practice to use questions to get more information.

An essential part of this activity will be to reflect in the group about what parents experience, and to encourage understanding of how the activity played at home with the child can be beneficial to the child’s learning.

What to do:

During:

How to play the traditional game of ‘I Spy’:

1. Choose who will go first in the game, who is the first ‘spy’.

2. Keeping it to themselves, the spy picks an object they can see.

3. The spy announces ‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with ____’ the first letter of the word for the object. This can be done phonetically or otherwise.

4. The other players then have to guess, looking around them, what the object beginning with that letter could be.

You can start with letting the parents guess. Model how you would interact with the child. Model the use of questions to initiate the game:

-      Phonetically:  I spy with my little eye, something beginning with

 …. Can you guess what it is?

-      Colours: Can you see something that is red?

-      People: I someone with long hair. Can you guess who it is?

-      Letters: I spy the letter ‘A’. Can you see it? Where is it?

-      Numbers: I spy a number 3. Can you see it? Where is it?

-      Shapes: I spy something that is round. Can you see it? Where is it?

Then change roles, and model how you would act to find out about the object or people around you. Model the use of questions, such as:

-      Size: Is it big or small?

-      Function: Does it fly or crawl? Can I put things into it?

-      Number: How many legs does it have?

-      Colour: Is it blue?

-      Location: Is it in the room? Is it outside? Is it on the wall? Is it on the floor? Where does the person come from?

-      Texture: Is it soft? Is it spiky?

 

After:

To support reflection, engage parents in a group discussion after they have engaged with the activity. Questions can focus on their enjoyment of the activity, their own experiences with this activity, and the learning that can take place during the activity. E.g.

-      Did you enjoy this activity? What did you enjoy about this activity?

-      Have you played this game at home with your child? What are your experiences?

-      How was it different today?

-      Did you notice the language the practitioner was using today? How could this support learning?

-      What kind of learning can be stimulated through this activity?

 

More ideas:

Extension: For multi-cultural groups, asking about words in different languages or different scripts, or even traditions can be a nice variation of the game, which may also support group members to get to know to each other. E.g.

-      Languages: I spy someone who speaks Punjabi? Who is it?

-      I spy some letters written in Tamil. Which ones are they?

-      I spy someone who says ‘Ola’ for ‘Hello’. Who is it?

-      I spy someone who I think might celebrate ‘Diwali’. Who is it?

The use of video: To support reflection, play sessions could also be video-taped and shared with parents afterwards to stimulate a discussion about the experiences parents had during the activity, and the learning that can take place in a situation like this. 

Home activity: Parents in the group could also be asked to engage with their children at home playing variations of this game. One nice variation could be to use a variation of this game when exploring the house or the neighbourhood. 

- Parents could for example ask the children to find signs with letters or numbers on them when walking to the shops. They could go out for a letter-, number- or pattern-walk and try to spot words, letters, numbers, and patterns. They could ask them to find writings in different languages. 

- Parents could ask children to find as many objects as possible in the kitchen that start with a particular letter or sound. In families with more than one language, they could ask about words starting with letters and sounds in their home language and then in the school language.

Children could be asked to document what they can find in taking photos of the different objects. Parents could be invited to share this experience with the group. They could for example take a video of their child playing, take some photos, or share an oral or written story about what happened. Children could be asked to take photos of the objects they spotted. Parents could be invited to use the forum to post their stories/materials.

Parents could also be asked to use the forum to look at the pictures they posted together with the child, to talk about the objects, and to label them (maybe even in writing, using the different languages they know).

Some tips:

Remind parents to use their home language.

The Department for Education/Australia published an excellent descriptions of the game 'I spy' and variations of it on their website. 

For 'I spy' click here.  

For 'Pattern walk', click here.

For 'Number walk', click here. 

For 'travelling with children', click here.