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Under Twos Creative Expressions through sensory exploration.
In our Pukeko room (infants) at Beststart Montel we spent our Easter exploring messy play!
A big favourite for many of our learners. While we appreciate Easter and the excitement it brings for many children, we focused on exploring our senses through a variety of experiences.
Our Thursday, was such a thrilling day. We began with car track painting, utilizing recycled boxes as our canvas on the lino inside. Ready with our toy cars and splotches of paint, we explored movement and mark-making. Through this experience, we were able to touch the paint, watch it spread and develop working theories as our actions and movements changed the image on our canvas. We then explored crayons on a new canvas of cardboard directly afterward.
This was interesting as we gripped the crayons, test tested their texture and found the pressure to make marks through dotting, banging and swishing them across the canvas.
Our afternoon continued with joy as we explored cloud dough; made from conditioner and corn flour. We are blessed with a nice wide open outdoor space so this was our chosen area to explore using our senses. The cloud dough was light and pliable but over time it became crumbly and powdery.
What a great way to challenge our fine motor skills through the pincer grip, pressing, molding, squishing, and patting this texture. From here we went over to the giant cardboard box that was laid out on the grass and used our bodies to explore this new addition to our grass area. We were curious about what its purpose was.
Steadily, Kaiako dripped paint splotches onto the cardboard canvas and set out squigz (suction toys) to explore the paint with. This was a very new experience as we usually use our squigz on the mirror, windows and tables. Spreading paint and watching it splatter as the squigz pressed into the canvas was a load of fun!
This exploration expanded from using squigz to incorporating fingers and feet too! Our day was blessed with beautiful weather and perfect temperatures so we spent as much time as we could in the fresh air, developing our senses and creative skills through play. After we returned from Easter weekend, our messy and creative play continued. We began our day with painting in our outdoor environment. Being mindful of the number of children to cater to, we set out our flattened, recycled cardboard boxes as our canvas. With the support of Kaiako our akonga picked their brush of choice and came over to dip their brushes in the array of colours and make their marks. We continued exploring corn flour through a gloop and began mixing the colors provided.
This very quickly became a full-body experience as we sat amongst the gloop and moved our bodies through it. To finish off the week we explored cloud dough again and play dough too! We tried our best to mix the two doughs, only to find that they were both better as crumble! Knowing our learners and the group experiences they currently find joy and deep interest in exploring enables our team to spontaneously provide these activities and mindfully observe the array of learning and individual styles of exploration. We are mindful of observing their dispositions, their communication and expressive styles along with their physical and cognitive skills.
These are the juicy bits that make for beautiful stories to share with our learners and their whanau, which also pave the way forward on their learning journeys.