Children love play. Play is the work of the child. I believe that children can learn something from play. From my observation I found that children like to play with play dough. Children enjoy every aspect of the exploration of play dough. In my centre, we gave children the opportunity to making play dough with us. The best part is we only need a few common ingredients to make it, so that children will not lose their patience in a short process. Children were enjoying to touching, feeling and mixing the play dough. I think this is the best way to let children to get in touch with technology. Teachers are introduces real life math skills through the good opportunity (e.g. weighting, quantity). After complete to make the play dough, children would like to stay and play with that. This is the best way for children to creating things out of play. “Technology is about problem solving, designing, re-designing, finding solutions, and thinking about process” (Smorti, 1999, p. 7).
From children playing with play dough, I
found that there has lots of benefits to playing with play dough. It helps
children to develop their motor skills. For example, strengthen their little
fingers, hands and wrists. Children also improve coordination through they move
their hand and arm. “Children gain confidence in and control of their bodies.
Children develop increasing control over their bodies, including development of
locomotors skills, non-locomotor skills, manipulative skills, and increasing agility,
co-ordination, and balance” (Ministry of Education, 1996). Play dough provides
a sensory experience that extends imagination and creativity. Children can learn sharing when they were
playing with other children. They are take turns and share the equipment. This
is a way to foster the cooperative play. When children play with play dough,
there doesn’t have the right or wrong way to play with that. Children can
develop their self esteem. Play dough is an ‘open’ resource with no set way of
using. It can be everything, just like food, animals, flowers etc. And vocabulary
will be increased with use of descriptive language. Te Whariki Strand 5, Goal 4
described that, “They learn strategies for active exploration, thinking, and
reasoning. Children develop confidence in using a variety of strategies for
exploring and making sense of the world, such as in setting and solving
problems, looking for patterns, classifying things for a purpose, guessing,
using trial and error, thinking logically and making comparisons, asking
questions, explaining to others, listening to others, participating in
reflective discussion, planning, observation, and listening to stories”
(Ministry Of Education, 1996).
Reference:
He whāriki mātauranga mo nga mokopuna
o Aotearoa.
Smorti,
S. (1999) Technology in Early Childhood. Early Education, 19,
5-10.
