A Peek Inside Our Playroom: Gearing Up for our Community Helpers Theme

 Community Helpers is another one of my favorite learning/play themes of all time. (I feel like I say that every time I introduce a new theme!) It's another one you could devote an entire year of play and learning activities to and still not get bored. So much of a child's early life is a process of navigating their role in a 
world so much bigger than himself. It is why even the youngest toddler often prefers a set of our pots and measuring spoons to her own toys. It is why our little ones love to play with our phones and tinker with our computer keyboards. It is why they love to try on our giant shoes and get lost inside our hats. They are surrounded by big people in a busy world of big things to do. When we teach about community helpers, we go one step further than telling children about the big people in and around their environment; we invite them to imagine a world in which they are big people, too, doing their own big things in this big, big world! 

It is very convenient when a "field trip" involves stepping out to the apartment complex parking lot and seeing some awesome big diggers at work!

We were fortunate enough to be invited with our Mommy & Me playgroup to the
preschool next door who was having a visit with our local fire department!

Teaching about community helpers can be a great way to get out in your neighborhood and meet the people whose hard work and service keep our communities running. Field trips to places like your local firehouse, police station, post office, library, grocery store or bakery can be a great learning opportunity, and many of these places are eager and happy to welcome students and families to learn a little bit more about what they do. You can also utilize family and friends to teach and demonstrate about their careers. We happen to have a very busy couple of weeks ahead of us--and I am totally counting my son's visit to our dentist as a community helper's themed field trip! Never underestimate the value of learning about this theme that naturally happens when we are already out in communities. We hear sirens and see rescue vehicles. We see construction workers busily working on roads and building sites. We visit our doctors and dentists for check ups. We drop something off at the post office. These are all great opportunities to meet and greet the helpers in our community and talk about their important roles and work.

I love to incorporate transportation and building play into this theme!

Our learning unit at home will be very play based and hands-on. In lieu of more formal lessons, I will be incorporating learning centers, dramatic play opportunities, sensory play, process art and an overall child-led approach. As I teach both through a secular and religious lens, I will also be talking about important jobs and roles in our Jewish community. I also like to focus on ways children--even young ones--can already help in their homes and the community beyond. It is fun to imagine and play about "when we grow up," and there are many things we can do right now to be helpers and to serve ourselves and others. Our shelves are stocked with great non-fiction and fiction books about different careers. Our play area is ready to go with toys to manipulate, build with, play with and pretend with. I've included some dress-up clothes and costumes (many purchased at an extreme discount on November 1st or from our local thrift store). I've also set aside some community helper themed puppets and toy people for use with building materials, cars and other manipulatives as we play our way through learning about a variety of important people in our neighborhood. Here's a peek at our playroom so far. We will be learning about one career or genre of careers each day, during which additional play and learning materials will be set out to invite my son to explore and learn. He has a long time to decide what he really wants to be when he grows up and in the meantime, I know he will have a great deal of fun learning and playing about his options.

We will be learning and playing about:

• mail carriers
• firefighters/fire safety
• police officers/general safety
• doctors/dentists/veterinarians/staying healthy and self-care
• construction workers
• scientists/community helpers themed science!
• teachers
• librarians
• bakers/chefs/mashgiach (the rabbis who oversee factories & restaurants producing kosher foods)
• rabbis/a sofer--rabbis whose job it is to write Torah scrolls and other important Jewish documents
• Family Helpers--the roles we play in our family to take care of each other! 

I found a great set of free occupations playdough mats to print and laminate on this website.

Our writing center bin has been transformed into a mini mail center. My little guy can practice decorating cards and writing letters, stuffing envelopes, using stamps and stickers and even illustrating and gluing on his own postage stamps. I have a feeling we're about to get an influx of mail here! You can also let your little ones have some fun playing with your junk mail before you file it in the waste paper basket. Who doesn't love getting a letter in the mail?

We have some great transportation themed puzzles at home. I found this one in Target's Dollar Deals section and adapted it to include the community helpers who drive each form of transportation by using printed clipart and permanent marker inside the base of the puzzle. 

I collected a variety of clip art online to print and laminate
this matching activity to match "Who Works Where."

I've tailored it to use with my 2.5 year old by including only a small number of people and places. Older learners can sort through a larger quantity and even trace or write (provided sentence strips to copy from) the appropriate job titles and job sites using dry erase markers.

Happy Playing!