Play spaces for communication

Today, I put on a workshop session for parents to show how we can create play spaces at home, inside or outside, for little effort and cost, to encourage communication from birth.  It's part of a series of workshops we are putting on for parents with 0-3 year olds called Talking Together, and this one was called Chatter and Play.  A big part of our inspiring talk and communication initiative is the use of stories in play and extending children's learning by taking stories into other areas of their learning.

I set up a selection of play spaces around the hall at school - I'll go in to how and what in a minute...  Families came along and we all sat down on the floor together to talk a bit about why we are doing this.

A Treasure Basket Story

It's a while since I have written about using treasure baskets with babies and children, but it's one of my favourite things to tell parents about as they immediately see the benefits of natural play materials.

This week, parents and their babies, two's and three's, came along to a treasure basket workshop.  We all sat on the rugs around a giant basket filled with treasures.  The babies and toddlers immediately became engaged in exploring the items in the basket, and most of them were completely engaged for the whole session, up to as much as 45 minutes, while parents watched and commented on the objects they were exploring.

I'm going to use mostly images in this post as they give the best idea of what to put in a basket and how the children learn from the treasures.  I'll also add a couple of documents for containing ideas to add to a basket.  I'll talk about the theory of treasure baskets and Eleanor Goldschmied (treasure basket pioneer) next time.

Treasure Basket Play | Family Workshop

This morning I led a lovely workshop session with some families all about treasure baskets.

We all sat around a big basket full of all sorts of treasures - little baskets, pine cone, driftwood, willow balls, wooden comb, sellotape rolls, little teddy, ribbon, magnifying glass, old tin, wooden bowl, wooden napkin ring, wooden bracelet, piece of knitting, metal spoons, little drawstring bag, cork and lots more.

The children soon started investigating the treasures and we were able to see different ages of children exploring the feel, sound, taste, smell and look of the objects.  Thanks so much to the person who wrote on their evaluation that this part of the session should have been allowed to go on a bit longer!  We learnt an awful lot about the benefits of treasure basket play just by watching the children!