Resource Overview
Explorations K - Resource Overview
Learning Areas
The learning environments in Explorations are the physical areas children visit, both indoors and outdoors. They are spaces within the school, neighbourhood, and community. In these spaces, children make choices, take risks, interact with others, solve problems, and make discoveries. These safe areas inspire learning, promote independence and self-regulation, and encourage participation and collaboration.
Explorations offers examples of the following learning areas:
Language | Math | Science |
The Outdoors | Blocks and Building | Dramatic Play |
Visual Arts | Sand | Water |
Each learning area is introduced with suggestions for Setting up the Learning Area with accessible and varied materials, and Recording the Learning in a variety of ways.
Case Study
Inquiry: From Play to Project showcases how children’s play and exploration may initiate a focused area of interest or raise questions—ones that are sustained over time. This illustrated example demonstrates how you can support children in making decisions about ideas they want to explore and materials they may need to collect.
Collections
Each learning area in Explorations is centered around a suggested collection of materials. Some areas offer one collection, while others offer two or three.
Each Collection includes the following sections:
Open Exploration presents examples of children at play they have initiated, either alone or with others. These examples illustrate and acknowledge different types of play: object play, pretend play, social play, and physical play.
Extending Open Exploration is the primary section in Explorations that illustrates how questions and discussions based on children’s play at a learning area can point to appropriate intentional activities. These prompts are clustered to show how to connect the play to specific areas of the curriculum.
Sharing the Learning focuses attention on giving children the space and time to present orally and/or through demonstration.
Activity Menu presents a bank of intentional activities to introduce to children after reflecting on your observations.
Throughout the collections, photo vignettes and captions illustrate how children engage with their environment, materials, each other, and ideas. Watch For comments elaborate on how to use your observations to plan future learning.
Home Connection
Explorations values a partnership between home and school. To augment your communication with families, the Home Connection feature suggests ways to support, connect, or continue learning through the home environment.
The Explorations Website
Explorations offers a website to extend the use of the resource. There you will find a dedicated section for each of the learning areas. Each section includes
- a list of children’s books relevant to the learning area
- additional technology activities to extend your use of the resource
- customizable line masters to support your use of the resource in your classroom
- connecting home and school letters