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“Young children explore their world with all of their senses, through hands-on experiences they see their evolving creations, the colors, the patterns, they feel the textures of the materials; the soft petals, the rough bark, smooth stones, and smell the fragrant leaves and flowers.” (NaturePlay Qld,2017)

Nowadays, there are many contemporary theories that considered the environment as critical to supporting children’s learning. In Reggio Emilia’s approach, the environment is valued as the ‘Third Teacher. It’s viewed as a place that is welcoming, authentic aesthetically pleasing, culturally representative of the community, embraces nature, and is filled with purposeful materials.

The environment plays a vital role in contributing to children’s well-being,  creativity and developing independence, it also offers a diverse range of experiences that promote kids’ learning and development. As an educator, we could thoughtfully add materials to the environment to promote children’s creativity, thinking and problem-solving skills, questions, experimentation and open-ended play.

Children learn from the items in their environment, that is the reason why we need to pay extra attention to the materials that we provide to them. Children are live in a bombarded sense world today, they are exposed in front of screens and get in touch with too many vibrant colors and loud sounds. Children need more opportunities to interact with the natural world. Obviously, encouraging children to explore our natural resources helps kids bridge their connection with nature.  Natural materials are easily accessible, it has complex shapes, textures, smells, sizes and colors which could provide more possibilities for discovery, inventiveness and creativity.

Natural materials are loose parts that can be combined, moved, lined up, taken apart and put back together again(Chelsey, 2013). Moreover, Nature materials are often open-ended. Children are empowered creatively with the presence of open-ended materials that could be constructed, manipulated and transformed through self-directed play (Steve Watts, 2019). For example, kids use wood blocks as a phone or shells as money, they could decide the purpose of an item.

Besides, the natural resource is eco-friendly, it could be recycled, re-used and repurpose. All materials including pebbles, branches, leaves, fallen, flowers, pine cones, twigs, shells and so on go on and on are naturally produced by our environment and can be recycled. Natural materials also returned with ‘0’ carbon dioxide released into the air to where it comes from, also no water wasted.  This provides opportunities for children to problem solve and is creative in ways that develop their respect for the environment and thoughtful use of limited natural resources and sustainability (ACECQA, 2018).

For this digital visual journal, I would like to inquire into the concept of ‘using natural materials’ by introducing and exploring the next six artifacts through artistic inquiries with sound, music, movement, drama and materials.

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The use of a variety of wooden objects such as wooden blocks could provide more -open-ended experiences for kids since these resources could be built as everything. It allows kids to have unlimited imagination and express themselves through their play. The wooden comes from nature could be built as different artifacts such as cars, buses, and airplanes.

Woodend vehicles are a perfect and classic toy for all ages of kids, either boys or girls. When children play with these moving wooden vehicles, they have the opportunities to move, such as rolling, crawling and jumping. The movement has a strong link with kids’ cognitive development. This messaging is important for the brain-body connection. The ability of the brain to develop and maintain neural connections is based on the new movement and play experiences of young children (Choosy Kids, IMIL 2016).

Wooden car exploration also has the potential to develop kids’ social and communication skills by them remembering the things we say that later use in play. Children’s vocabulary is also be expanded through the development of social skills. To sum up, I think it is necessary to put some natural wooden toys in the classroom and become part of the environment.

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As we mentioned before, natural materials could be considered as loose parts. The use of loose parts in play is a highly creative activity.  Loose parts are materials that can be manipulated, connected, disconnected, and used in a myriad of open and creative ways.  Loose parts are all about the imagination(Simon Nicholson, 1970).

Then you will question about is there any loose part in music? The answer is yes. Sounds and music are everywhere in our daily life. Music and language have a strong connection and many common elements. We are using these elements throughout all of our life. When the kids explore the musical instruments, the tones and rhymes they hearing are help them to communicate and contribute to building their own world.

The natural instruments meet the basic principles(Reggiomusic, 2019) of music’s loose parts.

·       Music parts are easy to arrange and manipulate

·       Natural and quality materials are used for tone and sound quality production

·       Music parts are chosen to create interesting, meaningful, aesthetic sounds- not noises

·       Playful and imaginative processes are encouraged with possibilities for both socialization and personal exploration

Besides, the application of using natural materials in early childhood education also provides kids the opportunities to build their gross motor skills by their movement such as banging. We could set an area with natural instruments or natural loose parts of musical instruments both in the indoor and outdoor environment in case let children engage more in natural environments.

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Pinecone is a rich natural resource that easy to access and collect while kids are out and about in autumn. When children use natural materials they could observe and use all their senses. The variety of different ways of decorating pinecones involves decision-making and problem-solving, which provides the children opportunities to become innovators, designers, explorers, artists, and collaborators.

For example, we could set an activity for children,  combine pinecones with human-made resources and create artifacts. The materials are just a pine cone, color paint, and other small decorations things. When kids decide how to make their own pinecone decorations, they will use their imagination and decision-making skills. Different kids will have their different versions of pinecone decorations.

Nature stimulates children into thought, action, and formulating their own ideas. Children will absorb and be completely attentive to what is at hand while they are exploring the natural materials.

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Unlike the plastic human-made resources that usually feel smooth, the natural materials provide a variety of different textures for children especially babies to experience. In that case,  creating the treasure basket for children's exploratory and sensory play is considered a great way to use natural materials. Treasure baskets are also a natural, attractive way to display resources and materials.

Young children explore their world with all of their senses, through hands-on experiences they see their evolving creations, the colors, the patterns, they feel the textures of the materials; the soft petals, the rough bark, smooth stones, and smell the fragrant leaves and flowers. Sensory play builds nerve connections in the brain’s pathways, which lead to the child’s ability to complete more complex learning tasks (BURCH, 2017).

Therefore, when the babies suck, handle, and put items in their mouths from the treasure basket, it’s easier for them to gain the experience. We could see treasure baskets provide a great chance to engage children’s exploratory senses and give allow them to explore the different natural resources when they are young. These experiences will have a great impact on their concentration, independence, and decision-making development.

The spark of endless hours of sensory play of treasure baskets is also an excellent practice for children especially babies in sitting up. They will be strengthening their core, and many other muscle groups, as well as developing balance and coordination (Williams, 2021).

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To make the fairy garden, all the materials that we need are gathered from nature. Such as pebbles, petals from flowers, leaves, nuts, or sticks. Options are endless, anything from nature can be used for a fairy garden.

Everyone has the potential to be an artist, there are no barriers to age or artistic ability. Natural art has no mistakes, it’s a journey of creating and re-creating. Fairy Garden is obviously a good way for children to explore materials and art.  When kids build their own fairy garden by comparing with different colors or sizes of materials, such as creating a footpath with different sizes of rocks, it will have a positive impact on their cognitive development.

Moreover, a fairy garden is not a one-time activity for children, it’s a long-term process that needs them to check the elements in it all the time. In that situation, children could also have lots of movement and develop their physical health body through this artefacts.

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Rocks as a natural material are free to supply and easily found for us. Besides, Rock has different textures, sizes, and colors which provide kids a great opportunity to feel the amazingness of naturally made items(Nature Materials).

The artefacts letter stone combines these amazing natural resources with learning The alphabet.  Children's knowledge of letter names and shapes is a strong predictor of their success in language and reading skills. When children learn more about letter names, they will have more motivation to discover more words around them, thus developing their reading skills.

For the application of letter stones in early childhood education, we could set a series of activities. Kids could start to find the letter regarding their name. When involves about increase difficulty, we could even let children play alphabet matching with letter stone by et of uppercase and lowercase letter rocks, then ask kids to match letters.

It is worth mentioning that children can also use these letter stones for dramatic play. For an instance, they could image these stones as ‘food’ otr also use these round stones as ‘currency’. Letter stones are a great potential natural materials artefacts for children’s play.

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Overall, there are lots of benefits to using natural materials in early childhood education (Busybees, 2021).

•Creativity

Natural materials stimulate creativity and imagination by providing children with open-ended play experiences

•Sensory exploration

Children can explore natural materials with all of their senses, e.g. feeling the texture of the pinecone, smelling a flower, observing all the different colours and textures that are abundant in nature

•Environmental Awareness

Engaging with natural resources supports children to care for natural environments and develop respect for living things. Using flowers, shells, stones, fabric, baskets, art prints and other materials in the curriculum helps children to learn to appreciate natural beauty.

•Imagination and problem-solving

Natural resources have infinite uses in supporting children’s problem solving, scientific inquiry, and numeracy skills. For example, children can group them by size, shape or color, use textures to create stamps on paper, count how many of each item they have, explore which items sink and float in water, etc.

Natural materials are easy and free to collect. It could be found from nature walks, donated by community members, or purchased from landscaping suppliers. It’s a beautiful and wonderful resource for the early childhood program.

As an educator,  we could encourage kids to explore more natural environments by providing them the adding tools such as shovels and magnifying glasses. It’s important to ask children some open-ended questions and observe their interest when they are discovering natural resources.

We could also bring natural materials into the room, use components of nature in the indoor environment setting and encourage kids to make them into the artworks. For example. Children could imaginations to provide an idea by exploring pinecones, stones, seashells, leaves, and twigs which are displayed in the basket.  There are more nature’s artifacts ideals such as feathers, a bug’s shell, fossils, or a bird’s nest we could let kids explore.

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NaturePlay Qld (2017). Children, Nature and Play. [online] Nature Play QLD. Available at: https://natureplayqld.org.au/.

BURCH, R. (2017). Art in nature, it’s everywhere. [online] Nature Play QLD. Available at: https://natureplayqld.org.au/blog/art-in-nature-its-everywhere.

Watts, S. (2019). The Importance of Loose Parts Play. [online] Busy Bees. Available at: https://www.busybees.edu.au/2019-06-17-the-importance-of-loose-parts-play/ [Accessed 13 Mar. 2022].

ACECQA (2018). THE ENVIRONMENT AS THE “THIRD TEACHER.” p.2.

Choosy Kids(2016), I Am Moving, I Am Learning. "Moving with the Brain in Mind." p.5.

Chelsey (2013). 8 Simple Ways for Children to Create with Natural Materials. [online] Buggy and Buddy. Available at: https://buggyandbuddy.com/creating-natural-materials-discover-explore/ [Accessed 12 Mar. 2022].

Williams, M. (2021). 16 Benefits Of Using Treasure Baskets With Babies. [online] Early Impact Learning. Available at: https://earlyimpactlearning.com/16-benefits-of-using-treasure-baskets-with-babies/.

Busybees (2021). The Benefits of Using Natural Resources in Children’s Play. [online] Busy Bees. Available at: https://www.busybees.edu.au/the-benefits-of-using-natural-resources-in-childrens-play/.