Daisykins Nursery in Rugby have been working hard to introduce fantastic new ICT resources into every room of the nursery to give children more opportunities to learn through interactive software. Baby plus couldn't wait to explore their new tablet and all the children eagerly gathered around waiting to have a turn.
The practitioner let the children choose what they wanted to explore and one child said ‘elephant’ as he could see an elephant icon on the screen. They turned on the programme and a variety of animals came onto the screen followed by lots of music and sounds. They children got very excited and immediately started tapping the animals on the screen. As each animal was tapped it made the correct animal noise and if it was tapped again it said a fact about the animal. Some of the children joined in copying the animal noises, laughing and giggling at each other. ICT is a brilliant tool to use for specific learning activities as it engages a variety of characteristic of learning and tunes into a variety of interest and intelligences as all children learn in different ways. It appealed to some children as it was musical or made a noise, other children liked being able to touch the animals and others enjoyed the moving animals. Using ICT also teaches the children about cause and effect and also develops important hand eye coordination. This was a fantastic learning experience for the children which will now be extended through various small world animals and story books.
