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Cool Play
With winter upon us each morning our tamariki eagerly check to see if ice has formed in our trough.
“Is there ice today?”
“No ice today we need Jack Frost on the ground”.
Then …….
We arrived to a carpet of frost over the play ground. Where there’s frost there’s ice.
We wrote our names in it.
We hypothesised ‘does it break when you run on it?’ ‘What about a lava volcano melting it?’
We described it, ‘cold wet…’
Then there was nothing…for days. We decided to get party ice to continue with our ‘cool’ investigations. We jumped on it, skidded in it, stuck to it, and when it got muddy we added kowhai and kikorangi dye. After a while our play turned the ice kakariki.
Hands on play allows us to experience ice through our senses. It provides us with the opportunity to offer and encourage rich language and development of working theories. These experiences form the connections, or weave the whariki on which a child’s forever learning is based on. A child can hook these experiences to their future studies such as Physics, Chemistry or English. In life these experiences can assist with forming schemas for safe boundaries or thrilling adventures.
We hope Jack Frost will be back soon!