“Explain And Expand Your Thinking”

The Play Episode…

In the past few weeks Jeremy has been exploring the many ways he is able to take the farm/zoo
animals provided to him during free play and line them up in a straight line. We have been
encouraging Jeremy to “explain and expand his thinking” by asking him why he has decided to
line the animals up in these specific ways each time but also encouraging him to try lining them
up in different patterns and designs that may be a bit more challenging given the many shapes,
colours, sizes, and animal options that are being provided.

On this particular day, I was sitting at the arts and crafts table with a group of preschoolers.
Jeremy was nearby playing with a wide variety of toy animals on the carpet when he walked
over to me and asked “do you want to watch me lineup my farm animals?”, so I stood up, walked
to the carpet, sat down beside him and said ; “Yes, I would love to”. Jeremy smiled and began
picking up several small and large sized animals. He then very carefully picked the largest and
smallest animals he could find in the bin and placed them in a line. When he was finished he
said; “Look! I put the biggest ones first and the smallest ones last in the farm” so I looked at him
and said; “Great job! I love the way you compared the sizes of each animal before placing them
in a line”.

!
What does it mean?

During this play episode Jeremy demonstrated his ability to take the information
and suggestions he was given (self regulation 4.1) by his teachers and figuring out
a way to apply it while at the same time challenging himself to create something
that requires a higher degree of thinking in an order along a continuum (seriating
4.11) . Ultimately, Jeremy was able to recognize the extent of his abilities when he
determined the relationships between the animals that were of multiple sizes and
placing them in order from largest to smallest.

What could we do next?

In response to Jeremy’s growing interest in more complex seriations using the zoo/
farm animals, we will continue to arrange the environment and provide
encouragement to support Jeremy’s growing level of creativity. We will continue
providing him with ideas on new seriations and patterns using the wide variety of
animals in the room, more specifically: lining up animals by colour, species,
location (where the animals are found in the wild), arranging the animals to create
multiple shapes and designs, etc.