The Heart of Play

Artifact 1 – My Heart at Play

This is a picture of my nephew, my little heart, Musa (11 months), playing with a medley of toys. We were visiting him in Windsor during ‘success week’ and my eldest daughter captured this moment. Used to having just his parents around, Musa was enjoying all the attention he was getting from me and my girls. My youngest, Khadeejah (7), kept wanting to pick him and cuddle him, just because “I love him so much Mama!” (K.Mir, personal communication, October 19, 2024). She was getting frustrated that Musa kept climbing out of her lap, opting to crawl around and playing with the various toys spread on the floor. Having been in the Bachelor of Early Learning Development Program (BELPD) for eight weeks, I tried to impart my knowledge and understanding of play (thus far) to Khadeejah. In very simple terms, I explained to her that Musa was doing very important work at this age by engaging in play. I told her that, “Musa wants to crawl around to discover his surroundings, he wants to feel the different textures of his toys by touching them and putting them in his mouth, he wants to press buttons to see what sounds play, and he wants to pick up his toys and throw them around to see how we react. Musa is learning through all this ‘play’, just as you would when you are solving addition and subtraction problems using Lego blocks. You are not ‘playing’ with the Lego, rather you are using it to solve the math problems on your sheet; you are working hard and learning. Similarly, when Musa is playing, he is working hard and learning as well” (Rabiah Khan, personal communication, October 19, 2024). I encouraged her to be in his space, play with his toys, and just see how he responds. Khadeejah got down on the floor and did just that – for about five minutes; after which she was back to trying to pick up and cuddle him, much to Musa’s annoyance. I guess both of us, Khadeejah and I, still have a lot more learning to do.

Artifact 2 – Rainbow Milk Experiment

As part of our Pedagogy course, our culminating assignment was to design an inquiry-based learning experience to gain a better understanding of how to provoke, invite, or inspire learning in early childhood settings. Through inquiry-based learning, children can make their own discoveries, nurturing curiosity, supporting exploration, and fostering a lifelong love of learning (Eti & Sığırtmaç, 2021). Inspired by the changing colours during fall and the well-known and loved book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr., we designed a learning experience about colour exploration. This exploration would encourage colour recognition, vocabulary building, and mixing colours through sensory play. One of the two activities in this learning experience was the “Rainbow Milk Experiment” (Science Buddies, n.d.). This activity enhances fine motor skills as children engage in movement by dropping food colouring into the milk and using Q-Tips dipped in soap to understand cause and effect relationships. Prompting conversations during the inquiry with open-ended questions, such as, “What do you think will happen when we put soap onto the food colour?”, “How can you move the colours around?” and “Why do you think the colours are spreading like?”, builds understanding of cause and effect, encouraging oral communication and building vocabulary.
          The professor provided very detailed feedback on this assignment and followed up with a presenting a provocation during class. Her demonstration made me realize that a good provocation needs a variety of open-ended materials to sustain in-depth exploration. The Rainbow Milk Experiment, although stimulating to the senses, will not sustain in-depth exploration; the child will be bored as soon as the milk turns murky. Other materials like various types of milk, soaps, baking soda, and vinegar can be included to further explore cause and effect relationships. Different mediums of colours, like paint, pastel or crayon shavings, and gel colours can also be included to facilitate further exploration. This assignment was an important learning experience, making me realize that I am still standing very close to the base of the mountain; I have a long way yet to climb. I am looking forward to it!