Looking At
We started this week’s enquiry based around the children’s interest in the unexpected downfall of snow. The children were exploring the snow in our outdoor area going through the trees over different levels (where there were mounds of earth and grass under the snow) and finding their balance. The children were also picking up the snow and “posting” it through the fence. We recognised this as the schema based play, “transporting”. The children were also interested in the snow that was on the slide, so we went to pick it up and have a look at it and realised there was ice underneath, with a layer of impacted snow and then soft snow on top. One of the children wanted to hold it and when a member of staff passed it to them, they dropped it because of the cold ice underneath. We then thought it would be a good idea to make footprints on the ground and prompted the children to have a look at them.
There was lots of communication from the children about the snow whilst making snowy artwork and on a visit to our favourite nearby community garden –
The children then went on to make a footprint masterpiece! They were very proud of their work, standing for a photo where it was displayed on the wall
Looking Under
Following on from the previous week’s provocations, we took the lead from the children’s interests and the activity that they enjoyed the most – making wellington prints. Therefore, for this week’s lines of enquiry, we linked to the previous theme and decided to “Look Under” our feet at footprints!
So we started off with introducing clay in the playroom first, encouraging children to explore with their hands so as to familiarise themselves with the texture. This is an activity that is new to this particular group and is a Froebelian approach that we plan to develop further as part of an Improvement Project within the setting. We then took the tuff tray outside, added a little water to some clay and put it in the centre. The children watched intently with slight puzzled looks on their faces as it was poured in. We were unsure if the children would be keen to try putting their bare feet in the clay but we asked if anyone wanted to take off their socks and shoes to try it and before we knew it nearly all the children had removed them to give it a go!
The first child to give it a try was a little unsure what to make of it. The child put their foot into the lump of clay and dragged their foot backwards across the tuff tray, leaving streaked prints from their toes. The child continued to put their foot in the clay and make footprints, becoming more comfortable with the feel of it and looking under foot to see what it looked like. The children took a turn each then to explore the clay with their feet. It became increasingly slippy as the children played in it so an adult was required to help support the children so as to ensure they did not fall. This caused much hilarity as the children slipped back and forth!
‘It’s clay’
‘I liked that, it was really funny’
‘It’s tickly’
‘It’s really slippy’
To further extend our ‘looking under’ activity, we did some print-making. We collected lots of natural items like acorns, flowers and sticks to push into our clay to make some prints into it. We encouraged the children to roll it out themselves and pick what they would like to put into their clay.
