We have been making our own playdough. We gather all the ingredients together, put them in a big mixing bowl and give them all a big stir! The children have been a great help at mixing all the ingredients together. Every time we make playdough, we give children a choice to which colour they would like. The children’s fine motor skills are becoming stronger each day by rolling, squeezing, and making playdough into their very own creations.
We have also been getting our creative skills on. We have decorated cookies! In the room, one of our learning environments is a home corner where we have a kitchen. In the kitchen we have utensils and food for children to express themselves through dramatic play. We loved seeing children using the home corner to enjoy make believe play.
Some early learning theory:
Lev Vygotsky, (1896 to 1934), was a psychologist who focused mainly on cognitive development in children. His ideas on socio-cultural theory are utilized heavily in most early learning settings and very much so in ours.
Vygotsky believed that development is intrinsically tied to social connections and interactions, children developing their cultural values, beliefs and problem-solving strategies through social interaction and as part of a community. Vygotsky believed that the culture a child grows up in influences how they think and what they think about, that thought and language are separate systems until age three, (meaning that the development of our internal ‘thought voice’ is linked with cognitive development), and that adults can impart their cultures tools of intellectual adaptation, (i.e. methods of thinking and problem solving that can be passed down), but that a social perspective on learning from peers is also essential.
We recognize the importance of social influence on learning and see it daily in our work with your children. We aim to help children develop positive social connections that empower them to learn from and alongside each other as well as ourselves.
If you’re interested in learning more about Vygotsky this website is a good resource:
simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html
