A few weeks back I shared Tom Bedard’s blog with you (on my Facebook page) and I am obsessed. If you didn’t get a chance to check him out then please do, he shares lots of budget friendly ways to expand your sensory play.
Obviously I couldn’t wait to have a go at creating some invitations based on his ideas. Those being that children have a desire to explore through levels, spaces, holes, inclines, horizontals and verticles. And as someone who has dedicated my time, as an early years practitioner, to exploring schemas, this idea spoke to me.
More so because I think that we forget the basics. We get wrapped up in what people share on social media (which is never ending) and often feel like what we provide isn’t enough or that we don’t have the resources to provide it. However, Tom shows us that with a piece of cardboard and a little bit of creativity we can create exciting and curious invitations.
Here are a couple of examples from my preschool rooms. We used resources we already had to create sand exploration based on providing levels, spaces and holes.
I have since applied this idea to many of the invitations I set up; I think about how a child could interact with the resources through their schemas. I ask myself if there is opportunities for connecting, rolling, transporting, enveloping, enclosing and so on. This can even be simplified to asking is there opportunities for going under, going through, going over, going inside, going along.
Check out Tom's blog HERE