Would he have found out what results could be achieved by mixing colors in different proportions?
Early childhood educators keep the important elements of ATL standards in mind as they plan the environment and opportunities for open-ended play and exploration. In the remainder of this section, we consider three major interest areas/centers in the early childhood classroom to illustrate how play supports these most important dispositions toward learning. These areas are sensory play, blocks/construction, and dramatic play.
Sensory Play
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Critical Thinking Question
- What part do you think teacher confidence plays in teachers taking the initiative to adapt curriculum?
Teachers understand that sensory play provides a perfect context for exposing children to both familiar and unfamiliar materials that challenge them to process and organize stimuli through their senses. Children use their sense of touch to explore textures, surfaces, and weight/pressure. They acquire depth perception, learn to differentiate between colors and shapes, and develop a sight vocabulary of objects and eventually words through visual processing. They learn to distinguish tone, pitch, and volume through hearing. As a sense of smell develops, children learn to identify and classify odors, acquire preferences, and acquire an “early warning system” for things that might not be good for them. Their sense of taste is closely correlated to smell; exposure to a wide variety of foods encourages discernment of the sweet, sour, salty, or bitter qualities of foods.
The process of converting sensory inputs helps the brain grow and become more efficient (Rushton, 2011). In this section we discuss open-ended sensory play in two areas common to many early childhood settings, sand/water (sensory) tables and exploratory activities withlight.
Sand/Water (Sensory) Table
A sand or water sensory table provides children with opportunities to touch, feel, and manipulate different types of solid and liquid materials. (Sand and water tables are also used to promote the development of mathematics and science concepts, discussed in Chapter 10.) The ATL standards are supported because children are intensely curious about materials available in this kind of experience and become deeply engaged in exploring their properties and figuring out what happens when they try different things.
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The materials used are intrinsically satisfying to the senses; many a teacher will attest to the calming influence of a sensory table for a child who is upset or one with the sensory processing difficulties that some children on the autism spectrum experience. Technically, any container such as a large plastic dishpan or baby bathtub can be used to hold water, sand, or other materials, but most early childhood settings make use of equipment designed for this purpose and sized to accommodate three or four children at a time. Commercially produced tables are widely available in different sizes/heights to accommodate a range of child age groups and contexts, have drains for easy cleanup, and may include space for storage or additional features such as a water pump.
Sensory play is not limited to the indoors, since most sand/water tables are made of durable materials and have wheels that enable them to be easily transported outside. In addition, a sandbox and/or dirt-digging area is a common feature of most child-care and preschool programs.
As soon as a child can stand unassisted, the sensory table typically becomes a magnet for activity, beckoning the child to touch, pour, sift, squish, poke, dig, mold, and handle materials that behave in both predictable and unpredictable ways. The list of materials for use in sensory play is limited only by requirements for safety and cleanliness, such as emptying and disinfecting water tables daily. Materials should be chosen with regard to the age of children; for instance, dried beans would not be a good choice for toddlers who might want to put them in their noses or ears! When sand or dirt-based material is used, it should be clean and free of any debris that could be harmful to the skin or if ingested.
Table 7.1 includes a list of base materials, tools or props, and activities that can be used or adapted for the sand/water table to promote the kinds of activities listed above.