Gorton House
Infants
Story by Educator May
Two weeks ago, our Gorton House babies spent some more time exploring The Infants’ Home’s gardens, where they discovered some colourful flowers. We followed our children’s interest and brought the colours of the flowers to an art experience to explore these further.
We set up a flower stamping experience using recycled paper rolls with paint colours such as red, green, and yellow, which were the colours of the flowers we discovered while exploring the gardens. We also had purple paint, as we had we noticed that we also have wonderful purple flowers in our Gorton House baby garden.
The children were excited to engage in this play, and to get messy and have a great time. This experience supported and enhanced children’s imaginations, as well as their colour recognition and fine motor skills, while also inspiring them to consider nature and sustainability.
Johnson House
Toddlers
Story by Educator Priya
Over the last few days, the children in Johnson House toddlers have shown an interest in learning about mathematics and science. To extend on their interest, we arranged a playdough-making experience. During the experience we explained the process and the ingredients for making playdough to the children.
The children helped the educator to put the ingredients into the bowl. During this process the educator and children counted together how many cups of flour they used. The educator provided the children with the opportunity to touch and feel the flour. The children enjoyed touching the texture of the flour and they talked about it, describing it as “smooth”, “white”, and “soft”.
The educators showed the children how to add red colouring into the mixture to make red playdough. After this, the educator explained about and showed the children a cup of warm water, from a safe distance. Once it had cooled down, one by one the children helped to mix the water into the flour to make dough. The children were very happy as they were directly involved in the process and could see the playdough quickly forming.
This experience helped the children to use and develop various skills and abilities such as sensory, motor, social, language, mathematics and science. In the future we will continue to provide them with opportunities to use and develop their different skills and abilities through play-based learning experiences.
