TOYBOX at Festival ELCC Training Day!
- ToyBox Manitoba
- Apr 30
- 3 min read
April 30, 2026
On April 30, TOYBOX was invited to run the PD Day at Festival Daycare. About 60 Early Childhood Educators (ECE) and staff attended the event to learn about effective playful learning to implement in classroom settings. We shared our learning resources with everyone—including the Toybox Animal Booklet with animal toy figures, the Toybox Deck of Cards with description cards, and a few Toybox Gardening kits—and discussed how literacy, numeracy, and wellness learning can be achieved through playful activities. Dr. Sheri-Lynn Skwarchuk read the TOYBOX children’s picture book titled Sharing Circle: Litty, Welly, and Nume Make Big Plans for a Picnic! to introduce TOYBOX ways of playing and learning.
Around 10:30 am, all teachers and staff gathered to join Circle Time. Dr. Catherine Dunnington shared a friendly and all-inclusive way of leading group activities in the classroom, demonstrated using a letter poster starting with “Dear Preschoolers”, written about signs of spring. We explored spring through a round discussion about a spring-themed picture book, singing earthworm songs, and planting flower figures in turns on the big green cloth. Many smiles and laughs were shared; teachers actively shared their thoughts and feelings about improving their circle time in their classrooms.
After the Circle Time, one of our Toybox team members, Tegwen, shared how to visit and navigate the TOYBOX website to learn more about playful learning activities (www.toyboxmanitoba.ca). Tegwen also showed how to print free learning resources from the Toybox website, which many teachers found helpful.
After lunch, Dr. Sheri continued to lead the presentation by explaining developmental theories, principles, and pedagogy behind early childhood learning. Her teaching highlighted that learning starts at birth, development is influenced by environmental factors, and play is an essential part of exploring the world. Additionally, Sheri shared that TOYBOX encourages collaborative, guided play that integrates play and learning. A few teachers asked about what learning level they should start from; Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) was introduced to encourage starting at the child’s level, where it is not too easy but not too hard, but in the zone in between, known as the ZPD.
After learning about the theories and pedagogy related to playful learning, teachers were invited to explore a TOYBOX activity as a group. Yeong, TOYBOX Newcomer Consultant, explained the Animal guessing game as one of the playful ways of building new vocabulary: one person becomes the “Zookeeper,” who is the only one to see the secret animal, and others guess the animal by asking who, what, where, when, why, and how questions. Teachers and staff gathered in five groups to play this TOYBOX animal guessing game and learned how playful learning can be applied in real life.
Throughout the day, many thoughts and ideas were shared in group discussions. TOYBOX was happy to see how teachers were inspired by TOYBOX’s playful learning and their excitement to try it in their classrooms. While Dr. Sheri was leading the discussion and Question & Answer session, a special guest from TOYBOX peeked at the door—It was NUME, our numeracy mascot friend! Nume came to celebrate the happy moment of delivering training certificates and TOYBOX T-shirts to all teachers who participated in the Training Day. Many teachers and staff were happy to see and interact with Nume as they received their certificate, taking pictures with bright smiles. We would like to say a deep thank you to the Festival Daycare for inviting and welcoming us, and for creating meaningful memories to share the bright hope together.
Written by: Yeong
Format Editing by: Wynonna