Supporting Children’s Learning: Water Play - Water Wall

 

    To begin our project, we looked at different definitions of ‘continuous provision.’ We then explored a range of areas of ‘continuous provision,’ including: Role play, Music, Sand play and Maths and Science and, after looking into these areas, we decided to focus upon a specific area of ‘continuous provision,’ which was water play.

  Following this decision, we researched a variety of media and publications with regards to examples of excellence in ‘continuous provision;’ examined theories of development, including Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development, linking this to water play; highlighted the benefits of water play, examples being development of fine and gross motor skills before exploring how water play can be linked to the Prime and Specific Areas of the Early Years Statutory Framework (EYFS) and holistic and heuristic development of children.

    We also considered ethical issues surrounding children; families; communities; the professional and research and, although these were broad categories, we felt they were valuable resources to highlight and consider in relation to practice and pedagogy, in addition to looking at what permanent and additional resources could be used in an Early Years setting, including:

·         Sea creatures; plastic boats (fantasy and imaginative play)

·         Jugs; pots; measuring cups (measuring, capacity and weight)

·         Corks; ice; marbles; apples (floating/sinking)

·         Funnels; water wheel (running through, linking to its liquid state)

·         Tea pots; watering cans; sprays (pouring skills)

·         Spoons; beakers; yoghurt pots (things to lift water)

·         Clear/opaque containers of different shapes; containers with wide/narrow tops (things to fill, linking to vocabulary such as full/empty)

·         Sponges (absorption)

·         Bubble bath; Glitter (texture)

Water Wall

  For our activity we made a ‘Water Wall’ which proved how much fun water play is, although it was time consuming, particularly in regards to making sure our canvas and tunnels were waterproof and consideration of any health and safety issues, including making sure children wear apron and wiping up any spillages of water. This artefact was also devised as a result of being inspired by seeing excellence in practice in an Early Years placement, as well as through research.

Stage One:

 

We layered the canvas with “Modrock,” which is a ‘Plaster of Paris’ like material which, when mixed with water and glue, makes the canvas waterproof. We also did the same thing with the two tunnels

Stage Two:

 

After the canvas and tunnels had dried, we painted them bright colours as we thought that the primary colours would be appealing for children and encouraged them to practice identifying the colours of red; yellow and blue.

Stage Three:

We stapled and nailed the tunnels and bottles onto the water wall.

Our Water Wall Completed

 

Documentation

       We documented our project through taking photographs of our artefact but other methods of documentation could be:  

•      Videos

•      Observations

•      Portfolios

•      Reflective Journals

•      Progress Trackers/Charts

•      Visual Posters/Diagrams

How we felt the presentation went

   We feel that that presentation went well; it was well presented and our PowerPoint was informative and provided everyone watching our presentation with graphical guidance. However, we also felt that we talked too quickly because of nerves and we could have produced hand-outs of our research to make our presentation more interactive and reduce the amount of work on our slides.