Task Three: Students facilitation of one learning experience.

I set up cornflour and water to make slime, added glitter and blue water into a tub outside for the toddlers to have a play in after they had afternoon tea.  The children can learn about water and cornflour making something else, something hard to pick up but will run and fall though the fingers.

The children had lots of fun splashing in the water and pulling the slime off the bottom of the tub or a teacher putting the slime into their hands.  I went with the children's interest one they were out there and after they were splashing in the tub and moving everything around and with more water being added, making the water a milky white, they started adding leaves to play with in the tub.  This empowers the children to facilitate their own learning to learn and grow with the materials around them (Ministry of Education, 1996)

The interacting with the children in this space was fun and enjoyable, they seemed to have lots of fun, laughing and screaming with the items they were playing with, they seemed to enjoy taking over the activity and making it their own by adding things they wanted in there, such as the leaves.  I sat along side them talking to them about what they were doing and playing in the water, milky, leaf water with them, picking up slime and leaves and dropping them.  Some of the children would put their hands under my hand to catch and then drop them again.

"Within minutes, a child can be both dependent and independent, according to changes in temperament, environment, or adult expectations" 
(Ministry of Education, 1996, p. 21).

To ensure the children were safe around the water I had it off the ground so their hands could get into the tub but they couldn't fall into the tub of water, I used hot water before the children came outside so it was warm when they came out and not too hot for their hands.  When adding more warm water I made sure it was out of the hot tap which is a good temp for the children and by the time it got outside it had cooled down a little more making it safe for the children to put their hands into, testing this with my wrist.

What I think worked was the children love water play and they played in it when more warm water was added as they didn't seem to like it cold.  Next time I will add more cornflour as once we added more water the cornflour dissolved, but this also gave the water a neat milky colour.  I liked that the children could make it their own by adding things they wanted in it like leaves. 

Reference:

Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki: He whāriki matauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.