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References for text:

1.     Hanna, W. (2014). A Reggio-inspired music atelier: Opening the door between visual arts and music. Early Childhood Education Journal, ₄₂(4), 287–294. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-013-0610-9

ISSN: 10823301

2.     Bond, V. L. (2013). Follow and facilitate: What music educators can learn from the Reggio Emilia approach. General Music Today (Vol. 27, pp. 24–28). Sage. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=eric&AN=EJ1019859&authtype=shib&custid=s1145751

ISSN: 10483713

3.     Welch, W. (2009). Who owns the story? Storytelling, Self, Society, ₅(1), 1–22. https://go.openathens.net/redirector/vu.edu.au?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jstor.org%2Fstable%2F41943296

ISSN: 15505340

4.     Yusof, F. B., & Tan, A.-G. (2019). Teaching music in the early childhood classroom for convergent creativity: Views from a meta-synthesis. Y. Tsubonou, A.-G. Tan, & M. Oie (Eds.), Creativity in music education (pp. 245–266). Springer. https://go.openathens.net/redirector/vu.edu.au?url=https%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Fchapter%2F10.1007%2F978-981-13-2749-0_18

ISBN: 9789811327490

5.     Wilson, R. A. (2018). Nature and young children: Encouraging creative play and learning in natural environments(3rd ed.). Routledge. https://go.openathens.net/redirector/vu.edu.au?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.taylorfrancis.com%2Fbooks%2Fmono%2F10.4324%2F9781315148533%2Fnature-young-children-ruth-wilson

6.     Colbert, Rebecca. (2008). [Review of Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder (Revised Edition 2008), by Louv, Richard]. Children, Youth and Environments, ₁₈(2), 297–298. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7721/chilyoutenvi.18.2.0297

7.     Bilton, H. (2010). Outdoor learning in the early years: Management and innovation(3rd ed). Routledge, pp 85-99

8.     Edwards, C. P., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. E. (2011). The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed.). ABC-CLIO. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/vu/detail.action?docID=820317

ISBN: 9780313359620

9.     Nxumalo, F. (2019). Decolonizing place in early childhood education. Routledge. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429427480

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admin. (2014, November 27). Creative thinking: Where do all the ideas come from? Zadro Agency. https://www.zadroagency.com.au/blog/creative-thinking-how-to/

Botanical estate mickleham. (n.d.). Retrieved 9 September 2024, from https://paig.com.au/botanical-estate-mickleham/1889

Corroboree, P. (n.d.). Australia map aboriginal flag sticker. Planet Corroboree. Retrieved 9 September 2024, from https://planetcorroboree.com.au/products/australia-map-aboriginal-flag-sticker

How do the senses work(Grades 3-5). (n.d.). Dana Foundation. Retrieved 9 September 2024, from https://dana.org/resources/how-do-the-senses-work-grades-3-5/

Serrano, A. (2023, July 7). What are intrusive thoughts? NewYork-Presbyterian. https://healthmatters.nyp.org/what-are-intrusive-thoughts/

Tetzner, R. (2021, October 5). In-text references, footnotes, endnotes, tables & figures in phd theses. Dissertation Proofreading Services for a Successful Graduation. https://www.dissertation-proofreading.com/blog/references-tables-figures/

We jump the world day. (2025, April 29). Days Of The Year. https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/we-jump-the-world-day/

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These experiences are crucial for children’s cognitive, social and emotional development. Children express their self-identities and creative imaginations through this play experience for which the temporal arts serve as a great communicative tool.

The sound children hear become an inspiration for them to express their own rhythms and tunes thereby allowing them to learn about their interests. The movement children observe a stepping stone towards their own dance moves as they leap over rocks, run through grass and chase animals. This spontaneous expression connects them deeply with nature. From dinosaurs roaming the grasslands to rocks as castle pieces, children’s imagination and drama allow them to experience the natural world as it serves as the perfect stage for expression of their creative stories.

Overall these components blend together to provide children a joyful, thought provoking and natural platform to explore their connection with the land. The book by (Wilson, R. A. (2018). express similar sentiments to the outlined discussion and argue that holistic development of the child- which involves cognitive, social, emotional and physical development requires an active experience in nature.

As with other researched articles, Wilson suggests that children who undergo creative play enhance their dramatic role play and interaction with the temporal arts. This occurs freely with children able to explore and express their creative conceptions. These studies are comparable as they involve observation of children with and without natural explorative tasks and this comparison illustrates the understated development observed in children undergoing unstructured play activities.

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Reflection on artefact and creative response

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Reflection on artefact and creative response

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In this exploration a walk is taken through the botanical garden area in Mickleham where clear grasslands exist along with many trees and shrubs. This area is adjacent to a local road where the sound of cars can be found. Several creatures and birds also roam the area.

The reason for choosing this location is the variety of natural resources available to explore. The clear and wide grasslands provide children with the opportunity to run through the area when they play their game or even go on their creative imaginative journeys with the trees providing further opportunities of play.

A wide variety of tasks which may involve retrieving natural objects can be successfully implemented in such an area which has a natural sense of peace and tranquillity.  For the creative response, I have designed a game based on my creative experience.

This game incorporates all components of the temporal arts in observation for children to develop learning from in their unique manner.

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The name of our game is Nature exploration bonanza, and it involves all the temporal arts elements  to engage children. The aim of the game is to use your natural inquiry and curiosity to perform tasks which have rewards that involve elements of music, dance and drama. Things required for the game are a simple notebook and a set of instructions and clues for each task.

This can be played as a solo player or against other players to see who is going to explore the area first and finish the tasks. There are many tasks in a game however examples of tasks from each of the temporal arts involve: Listen to the wind blowing on the leaves, are you able to mimic the sound you can hear  or even respond to the sound with a unique rhythm or song you know.

For a dance based task, find movement in the area such as moving animals, trees or even flowers and attempting to copy those movements or to make a unique dance from it. For drama, you can be one of the favourite characters in your book and your job is to explore the story as given in the task or even imagine and portray it.

Once a task is accomplished, the children are able to retrieve their reward which may be an edible item or a natural item which they can show and share with other children thereby also improving other skills simultaneously.  During this stage, children can also pay particular attention to temporal arts skills such as the sounds they heard, movements they undertook and the imaginative play they explored making the game a thoroughly enjoyable experience with holistic development of the child.

An example of live play involves the following:

As I walked through the green grass with the cool wind blowing across my face and swaying the flowers on the path side to side. As I walked, soft branches under me crunched with the sounds of birds chirping and humming of bees nearby filling my ears with wonderous sounds of nature. I approached my target first checkpoint, sound:

The first instructions were to listen to the sounds around us and record our thoughts. To me I felt a spontaneous rush to hum a unique tune along with the sounds of nature. A bird around me singing a wonderful melody to which my hum rhymed with a made a tune I enjoyed. The reward: collect this small dry leaves container to which I showed my peers later as I reflected on how I dealt with the sound prompt.

As I moved forward, next stop was imagination and drama:

The instructions were to use the natural surroundings as inspiration for a natural role play scene which could be shared. I imagined myself as the fox in the crow and fox story, where the fox travels through the meadows towards a tree and manipulated the crow in dropping the piece of cheese. I crouched on my all four legs and crawled towards the nearest tree, where a bird was singing. I began to persuade the bird and got my imaginary reward, a chocolate filled donut!!!!.

As I complete all the tasks of the game, I walk back to the group and share the amazing rewards and experiences I had as I describe my imaginative play and the movement/sounds I came across.

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I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which the creative response and analytical response was written, and the artefact was recorded. This land of Mickleham belongs to the Wurundjeri people and the language they speak is the woiworrong language.

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Botanical Mickleham

This artefact is important to me as it not only allows me to imagine creative thoughts in this area but also feel at peace amongst the serenity the area provides. The many trees, widespread grass and shrubs give me a connection to the land as belonging to the country I reside on is an important intrinsic part of my identity. The connotations I feel here can be linked to a study by (Edwards, C. P., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. E. (2011) who suggest that creative exploration especially in outdoor settings facilitates a unique connection with the land and allows for unforced use of sound, movement and drama as ways to creatively imagine thoughts in nature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1TJ8WXYJZw

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There was a myriad of sounds, movement and imaginative role play observed during the explorative play. It is hard to describe any solo sounds as everything I experienced was intertwined to make a beautiful encounter. The ways in which sound was also movement was observed through the wind which gently pushed against the flowers and grass, as they danced and swayed in the breeze.

Numerous imaginative streams began to flow in my mind, as active elements of the environment become alive.    I felt as if I was a butterfly flying around and exploring the vast grasslands which added life to the scene as I become engaged in all temporal arts in combination.

I attempted to isolate the various elements by focussing on just the sound or simple observing the movement of different elements however the scene came to life only via a combination of these elements where it become etched in the memory. Moreover as underscored by (Hanna, W. (2014). music and sound serve as a non-verbal method of communication where thoughts and perceptions regarding stimuli is revealed.

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There are several implications of incorporating elements of the temporal arts play in early childhood education. I believe that future practice in early childhood education should incorporate an outdoor learning component or nature explorative component imbedded into the curriculum.

Current practice has a focus on indoor structured and unstructured learning activities while outdoor explorative or sensory inducing activities are lacking. (Louv, R. (2008). suggests that nature based play engages children is such a way that it facilitates cognitive and emotional development through simulating their sensory system.

Therefore, incorporating an element of nature based learning has dynamic improvements. In a similar study, (Bilton, H. (2010). there is an emphasis on how the outdoor environment can foster emotional development within the child through play which is unstructured and spontaneous in nature. These studies highlight the significance of outdoor play in enhancing aspects of development difficult within indoor settings.

This reflection and the creative response highlight the benefit of having an outdoor exploration activity with a temporal arts focus has on development of self-identities, especially in a manner which may be limited in an indoor didactic classroom setting.

In a practical manner, we can implement similar tasks to the game to which children’s enjoyment and joy will allow them to capture more understanding about the temporal arts element and developmentally enrich themselves.

Children can also combine this learning with loose parts learning where they can explore the sounds of the loose parts in a scavenger hunt, moving their bodies freely. Along with this, children can engage in role play with the loose parts in outdoor learning thereby capturing their connection with nature and allowing its spontaneous nature to provide holistic development.

As captured by (Edwards, C. P., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. E. (2011) offering natural spaces free to interact in and away from bias or structured learning fosters creative thought, natural curiosity and exploration.

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In my analytical response there exists an interwoven reflective structure which aims to provide evidence based analysis for how temporal arts have been used as a platform and tool to undergo a creative exploration.

The manner in which resources each have sound, movement and drama function can be applied to imagination to enhance learning of these arts (Nxumalo, F. (2019). The analytical response details how this can be applied to current practice and towards children learning through a fun experience which is likely to provide not only developmental  but temporal arts learning as educators observe how children use sound, movement and dramatic role play to their advantage during play.

Vocabulary regarding temporal arts elements was imbedded throughout the analysis as it underpinned the approach to play children and educators have and will take for outdoor exploration as suggested by the creative approach.

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I felt several sensations which made me recognise how dynamic and moving the environment really is. The smell of the grass in the warm spring sun along with the smell of flowers faintly present throughout the area. The eyes had a spectacular view, able to observe the grasslands, the huge variety of flowers, trees and some of the small animals and creatures which were roaming the area.

The ears have a delightful time with the sounds of birds, the rustling of leaves, the gentle breeze, vehicles in the distance and sounds of children playing nearby. I felt alive and so relaxed as I walked through the grass feeling the nearby trees.

The feeling of the cool bark on my hand, send ripples down the spine making me feel attached to the pristine environment. The cool wind on my face elicited feelings of peace and tranquillity while the taste of the fresh air evoked an alive feeling.

The literature suggests that these feelings are connected to other temporal arts elements such as how movement plays an active role in understanding and feeling connected to music. (Bond, V. L. (2013).  highlights that children when moving are able to connect to the rhythm and tempo of the music. This suggests a link to the above study by (Hanna, W. (2014). as both in unison explain the best sensory experience that one can experience arises from a combination of the temporal arts elements as a multimodal experience.

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Several important thoughts circulated in my mind as I ruminated during the exploration. When I was young, often playing in outdoor spaces and parks was the hobby we enjoyed most. Often at times we would begin playing in the afternoon till the sunset and we could not see by each other anymore.

All-important conversations, explorations and learning during this stage as we interacted with others and enjoyed. This notion is also reinforced in Vygotsky’s theory of development which outlines the role of drama and imaginative inquiry in engaging children thus enhancing their critical thinking skills and emotional development (Yusof, F. B., & Tan, A.-G. (2019).

An experience similar to this is required for children as it lets their imagination, interests and  personalities guide their explorative journeys. Furthermore, the interplay between the temporal arts elements is often observed in children’s play and enhancement of this through the game foster holistic development. Thus far, the literature suggests similar notions which portray the importance of spontaneous  explorative play in combination with sounds, movement and drama inquiry.

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This experience was very soothing and allowed me to feel connected to the environment whilst self-reflecting in my thoughts during that. There was a notion of liberality and a freedom of the flow of thoughts allowing a child-like exploration of the area.

There was also a notion of agility and whimsical exploration which permit connection to the active and subtle parts of the environment. Overall I felt it was an extremely worthwhile experience, encouraging creative thought and promoting a sense of tranquillity whilst fostering deep connection to the land.

Designing the game following was fun as it all the feelings evoked from this experience were able to be transferred in such a way that children feel the same feelings in their unique ways. (Welch, W. (2009). illustrates that storytelling and sharing experiences develop qualities such as respect, thereby suggesting that children can also learn the art of successful interactions with others.