Country visit - Maribyrnong River Trail

mi123flora — 2025-09-06 11:15:25 UTC

This is my Country visit video

Country visit - photograph

mi123flora — 2025-09-06 11:20:50 UTC

Running water and transport

Country visit - voice record

mi123flora — 2025-09-06 11:25:26 UTC

Creative game - How to make the tree happier

mi123flora — 2025-09-06 11:26:35 UTC

Analytical respone

mi123flora — 2025-09-06 11:28:04 UTC

I went to the Marybyrnong River Trail near my house to do my visit, I choose this place because I think it has a deep connection with me. However, this is the first time that I slowly sit down and connect my senses with it, and I realized the power of sound, movement and drama in my life. I see myself as a children explore the nature by myself, put myself into a naive way to see the world, and I see the connection between children and nature, as I experienced in my childhood. According to Wilson (2018), children wants to know where the animals live, what they eat and how they protect themselves. I heard the bird sounds, but I thought it was ducks because I often see the ducks on the river and I followed the sound so that I knew it was birds and there was no ducks today. I also heard the machine sounds in the other side of the river, I tried to look for it and guess what are they doing with this machine. When I followed the sounds, I felt like I was a kid who try to find what take my attention. And I connected the experience together, what I see, hear and listen. I strongly believe that sound, movememt and drama have a deep connection to each other. As I see how the birds fly in the sky and making sound, then how the machine sound and working, and even a guy was yelling on his phone, I can see how his movement express the angry. These elements link together and support our experience in the world, each of them support the experience strongly. Wilson (2018) also claims that nature is unpredictable, real and sensory-rich. I even try to taste the air, it’s salty and a bit sour. I also smell the land, the unique smell of the land after the rain. At that time I feel like I just explored something new, and I feel like my energy is charged after I connect myself with nature. I feel like I was coming back to my childhood, went to a park, no devices, listen to all the sounds and see how the world around me moving.

I also got my artefact when I went to my country visit. I recognized a young tree standing alone on a grass, even though the other trees are standing together, and also no birds flying around the tree, so I was thinking it similar with the tree I saw in university, it looks so sad and I want to make this scene happier. According to Wilson (2018), nature can be used as an integrating context for all classroom displays, activities, and experiences. That’s why I create a game about nature in the classroom, I strongly believe that it’s not only help children to connect to the ‘indoor nature’, but also develop their creativity. About my creative work, I filmed a video about the game named “How to make the tree happier”. I asked my ‘children’ to first pretending they are in park and explained how they see, feel or hear. I put my own experience to it as I record the sound when I went to the walking. I told children about the lonely tree, asked them if they have any ideas to make the tree happier. So the ‘children’ have a lot of ideas, they will be his friends, Peach will be the other tree standing next to him, Penguin and Octopus will be the birds flying and making sound around the tree, Mole wanted to be the wind as he likes the wind sound, and Apple guess the tree is apple tree, so she wanted to be the apple in the tree. The tree finally has new friends around him, everyone plays together and he is not alone anymore. I choose drama as a way for children as I watch the video Journey to Healesville - learning through drama (n.d), I see that through drama, children can improve their problem - solving and develop their imagination. Meyers and Berk (2014) state that a research shows that adults encourage pretend play most effectively by supporting and extending without controlling children play’s themes and choices. When children is pretending play, they learn about sharing roles and collaborative, it also helps children develop thinking skills and decison - making. The game include sounds as children be the wind and the birds to make the happier scene, and the movement of the children as they fly like a bird and run around the tree. Overall, they make the boring scene have sounds, movement and dramatic as they are pretending to be natural elements for the lonely tree. Connecting the dramatic play to my creative project, children learn about kindness and unite. This is the message I want to send by the game. As a role of early childhood educator in a future, I completely want to bring this game to my journey. However, I think I need to consider as the classroom will have more children and I need to find a way to make the game more suitable in the classroom.

Reference list:

mi123flora — 2025-09-06 11:28:48 UTC

Meyers, A., & Berk, L. (2014). The SAGE handbook of play and learning in early childhood (pp. 43-55). https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473907850.n5

Vic Gov. (n.d). Journey to Healesville: learning through drama - teaching demonstration. https://www.vic.gov.au/literacy-teaching-toolkit-early-childhood/videos/journey-to-healesville