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Having had an observation of the characteristics of effective learning by a county adviser done lately, she suggests to use mind maps with my eyfs children, my question is how?

Has anyone else tried, I would be very interested in ideas?

(the oldest I have is my own daughter of 2 1/2, then I have three 2 year olds and a 11 month old.)

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Hi there

I have to say that Mind Maps with 2 year olds may be a bit too young.

Our Nursery has sued them successfully with 3 year olds, but using objects and not referring to them as mind maps more along the lines of 'I wonder what else you know about...?'

 

Does this help?

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Love using mind maps and we use them with 2 1/2 yr olds

 

I place an object in the middle (something to do with an interest) eg a fire engine then ask the children what they know

Writing this info down

We use this to

Find out what they know, don't know and what wrong info they have

What aspect of the object interests them the most ie fire, wheels, red , fireman or something that is nothing to do with fire engines

We then plan from that

 

There are other ways but I love doing this

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Im not sure if this method will achieve what you want though? COEL's are learning patterns and styles...how are you going to link this with a mind map? and what are you going to use that information for?

Sine the 11 month old is probably not talking this would be rather tricky i feel????

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Mind maps will define indepth areas of interest and where there is a lack of knowledge that you can fill,

Agree 11 month old little input :-)

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Hi

 

I agree that mind maps work best or are of more value to 3 year olds and up. We used them quite successfully for whole class and small group sessions and to come up with a way to plan from the children's interests. At the beginning of the year we start with a topic, for us it was simple nursery rhymes and ask the children what they know about this rhyme, its characters, what its about. We then scribe what they say. At the begnning they need some prompting with careful questioning but they soon catch on to what they are doing. They then come up with some of their own topics to mind map and activities that they would like to do. We use A3 size paper and then take photos during the week of what we have done/achieved. Both parts get laminated and it goes towards making a book for the whole class and is great for parents to look at and have on display for parents evenings and open days. We start with a simple box to write in (we chose a hexagon shape) and then graduate to four boxes. I will try to put examples on here...

 

Wheels on the bus.docx

incy wincy spider mind map planning photo.docx

incy wincy photos 2013.docx

four hexagon - food we eat.docx

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Claire Warden has a book called Talking and Thinking Floorbooks which involves 3D Mindmapping. She has several videos on You Tube. I went on a course about it and thought there were some interesting aspects, I haven't put any of it into practice yet as I felt a bit bombarded by new initiatives at the time, but I probably will. I'm not sure how it would help with CoL though...

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Guest youngrisers

Love mind mapping we use these most of the time in the setting and plan around them at our staff meetings. We then keep them in a large floor book and the children love looking through it to see what we have done and where we may go next. They love photographs to focus on, pictures they can draw/scribble and as our children start at 2 years old it does not matter how many participate. we have done this in small groups and as a collective group of children for example 10 plus adults.

This last term's theme revolved round a seashell and we linked it to stories of the sea such as the singing mermaid and three in a shell. Even The Clumsy crab got a mention so we made them and visited the seaside for our outing. children have so much knowledge we take it for granted what they know....

:D ::1a :D ::1a

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Guest youngrisers

could not remember whether I posted a comment on this but we love mind mapping with our children. This last terms topic started with a large seashell and spiralled into a whole terms worth of literacy stories I.e. The Singing Mermaid, The Clumsy Crab and so on , writing postcards well trying to and visiting a beach... collecting crabs was a challenge mainly dead ones, and making jelly fish out of loo rolls but we loved it....blue dyed rice as the sea everywhere and plastic crabs and fish were enjoyed by all who played with them plus blue jelly with treasure in it to find and blue shaving foam, we did get messy the children loved it and yes our cleaner is a saint clearing up after us....but did we stick to the mind map NO! but we discovered so much more...Useful to assess children's ideas and imagination and to form the base for any term's activities. Our mind maps go into a large floor book which all the children love looking through and joining in with writing, drawings and photographs....

even our 2 year olds can do something in it. :D ::1a :D

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Hi

 

I agree that mind maps work best or are of more value to 3 year olds and up. We used them quite successfully for whole class and small group sessions and to come up with a way to plan from the children's interests. At the beginning of the year we start with a topic, for us it was simple nursery rhymes and ask the children what they know about this rhyme, its characters, what its about. We then scribe what they say. At the begnning they need some prompting with careful questioning but they soon catch on to what they are doing. They then come up with some of their own topics to mind map and activities that they would like to do. We use A3 size paper and then take photos during the week of what we have done/achieved. Both parts get laminated and it goes towards making a book for the whole class and is great for parents to look at and have on display for parents evenings and open days. We start with a simple box to write in (we chose a hexagon shape) and then graduate to four boxes. I will try to put examples on here...

 

Thank you Emaloo - I love your mind maps. Can you tell me more about the hexagons? What sort of comments would you write in them? I would like to use your idea for our topic 'Autumn and Me'; I will be starting with 'Me' and then as autumn days approach weave this into our activities - though I am not entirely clear about how this will work.

'What do we already know about Me?' :huh: :D that's confusing to start with! I'm going to have to re-word that!

How do you 'graduate' to 4 boxes - are the boxes stuck onto the A3 paper and added as needed?

x

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I saw Claire Warden talk about mind maps loved the concept

 

We do our own version as already mentioned

Gove it a go, what have you to loose:-)

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I know that's probably a typo, but what a great saying for trying something that's way beyond your league and that you know you'll be rubbish at and make everyone hate you ..........

Was a typo but so funny and apt

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A few more of the mind maps we used for children's input on the topics we introduced. You can see they are very messy/scribbley but I just try to write down everything that the children say during the group time. I also draw pictures so when they look at it they can be reminded of some if the ideas and comments that they made. It doesn't always work as it depends on how interested they are. At the beginning you also need to ask some leading questions until they start to get the hang of it. After you've done the the first few and the children see that some of the activities we do are at their suggestion, they get more involved and begin to offer more ideas. Sometimes it goes completely away from the topic but that's great as it becomes child led. We once did a topic on clothes and after reading 'Aliens Love Underpants' the children became completely interested (obsessed!) with aliens and pants so we just went down that route!

post-7243-0-29115900-1407328328_thumb.jpg

post-7243-0-82724500-1407328431_thumb.jpg

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