Mar 14, 2022
Early Years learning is all about fun and play. When children are young, we need to develop their love for learning. It is our responsibility to develop their imagination, but also to make their school days the most fun experiences in their lives.
In Early Years, children should learn through getting messy and wet. If your child comes home with their uniform covered in sand, soil and water, relax! This means they had fun learning through play!
Water play has many benefits in the Early Years education. It delights the senses of young children and is far more than simply fun for them. There are so many good things about playing with water. Not only is it fun, but this type of sensory play is important for children’s development; physical, mental and social emotional. It helps develop fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. By playing alongside and with others, children develop their social skills.
A simple activity where children are asked to check if their paper boats will sink or float in water can cover many areas of your child’s development. For example, by exploring why certain objects sink and others float, children experiment how water travels, and at the same time they use their minds to develop their thinking. Most important of all-they are having fun!
Our children have always been drawn to the water. Through the Continuous Provision in our school, children are deeply engaged in water play, working out how it works, building their fine and gross motor skills. There are so many different activities we did with water. For example, we gave our children water in bottles and cups and they had to problem solve when they had tipped all the water out. How can they get it back into the bottles to use it?
Children began experimenting by putting boats made of different materials into the water, does it float or sink? They observed and guessed all of their boats would float. Some boats in fact sank and the children said ‘oh it is a submarine!’. What a creative way of thinking!
Another benefit of water play is that children develop a good understanding of shape, space and measure by testing and exploring using various jugs and bottles.
When we added water to sand and soil in the sand trays, the children loved the muddy puddles and were taking risks by putting hands in. What could be in there? Is it OK to get a little messy?
IS it ok to get a little messy? Of course it is! Young children know to follow the rules when it’s important. A child in one of our classes once said: ‘If you’re playing with water, you must remember to wear a dry shirt when you’re done!’ This is all we needed to hear to know our job is well done!
Ms Ana Korac
(Head of Early Years)