For this activity I have planned to collect natural materials that are found on the ground of our Kinder bush garden such as dry grass, dry leaves, tree bark, sticks and gumnuts.  As we are planning to visit bush garden this week, I am planning to invite children to become treasure hunters and look for this material as they explore bush garden.

My thought process in planning this activity is for children to form connection with the land as they engage in dramatic play, where they pretend to be treasure hunters looking for treasure. Children will develop their language skills as they listen to the instructions from the educator and learn names of the natural material.

Physical development as they move around to look for their treasure.

Fundamental math (value) concept development as they are pretending dry leaves to be treasure.

They showed curiosity by listening carefully to information about it and participated in trying to name the dishes that have this herb it. They smelled the herb. Children contribute their ideas by expressing their thoughts a some said they liked its flowers, and some shared they are going to give it to their mom and dad when they come to pick them up, and some decided to keep it for themselves.

Children quickly picked up the actions from the song and movement activity. That allowed me to make the song fast and slow to make it more challenging and fun for children. Next time I will try to change the sequence of the song as well.

During dramatic play children learn self-regulation as they cooperate with other children and educators while continuing their task as per mentioned in The SAGE Handbook of Play and Learning in Early (Meyers, A., Berk, L., 2014).

As we reached children gathered around me to play the treasure hunt game,  I pick up dry leaves fist as it was  easiest to spot, children ran with excitement and returned with dry leaves in their hands and I repeated the process with rest of the material  and as we had found all of the items some children kept on looking for their favorite natural material, where as some children decided to play their own games such as jumping form tree log and making camp fire.

Next time we can play this game with lot of other topics, for example, taking pictures of local birds found in bush garden and looking for them.

I would like children to take inspiration from their natural environmernt for their paintings. I believe children are naturally curious and capable learners. This further links with Reggio Emilia approach that sees children as capable learner are encouraged to actively engage with their environment and express themselves through multiple paths/ languages including creative expression (Edwards, C. P., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. E. 2011).

To further extend on this experience I am planning to find books relating to Bunurong people and read them to children to further develop our knowledge and understanding.