Reggio inspired clay play

Wednesday 14th February

It begins with one slice of clay. A blank canvas receptive to endless explorations . . .

Today our children engaged themselves with the new clay table to extend on aspects of sensory play. The children were using tools to make marks and indentations. The children discovered that the texture of clay was much firmer than play dough and that they could hold objects standing upright as well as discovering that clay can retain its shape when moulded. Lola said “It’s not moving.” As she placed wooden skewers into her clay mixture. “It’s my sandpit cake...it’s sand...my cake.”

Charlie was experimenting with making indentations into the clay using a wooden knife and creating slits to understand cause and effect “Cut..cut...cut” he would say. Ilaria was squeezing the mixture into her palm and pushed the clay onto the skewers piece by piece. She lifted the skewer into the air to check if it still held with the added weight. Wolfe was happy to punch holes into the clay mixture to create spotted patterns and experiment with cause and effect. June was interested in dramatic play and used the miniature plates to serve the clay as food. Olympia disliked the texture of messy play and in her own funny way, used a sock as an oven mitt to mound the clay (We quickly replaced this with a glove for her to use). We can observe the children discussing how the clay can change when wet or dry.

Our aim is to encourage children to feel comfortable with messy play and to be open to exploration with materials that are not familiar. Next week we will add more materials to the table with gems hidden in the clay to encourage manipulation.

There are many possibilities for learning:

Developmental growth: + Manipulating (squishing, squeezing, pulling, pushing, etc) a piece of clay helps develops the child’s large and small muscles – improving dexterity. + Fosters eye-hand coordination. + Builds a child's ability to focus/builds attention span. + Mathematical Understandings: + Fosters beginning pattern making. + Builds an experiential understanding of 3-dimensional shapes. + Tactical experience of size and weight differences

Literacy growth: + Builds vocabulary – pound, pinch, roll, flatten, poke, tear squeeze, coil, stretch, squash, twist, and bend + Creative story telling with clay pieces

For the moment, our children are at the stage of developing an understanding of what clay is, how it feels and how it could be manipulated. As the medium is going to be a fixture on our table top for some time, the play is expected to evolve from discovery to imaginative play