TheChurch at Midtown had a fun water day. I loved watching the children play! The church brought in a fire truck and they sprayed water for the children to play in. They also filled these tubs with shaving cream. The children covered themselves with shaving cream and then would rinse themselves off with the water from the fire truck.
This crew created their own game…they took the shaving cream out of the tubs and came up with…scooting the buckets!
Scooting the bucket- How does this help support a child’s development?
1. Building creativity skills- Exploratory play allows children to be creative. Through play children learn to create their own games.
2. Building Social Development.
• Leader- developing leadership skills by showing other children how to play the game. The child that started this game showed his friends how to push the buckets. He even directed the other children on speed and how to hold the bucket and push it up and down hill.
• Observer- several children observed this activity before getting involved. One little boy watched and observed, and then he had an idea to put sponges on top of the bucket. He expressed his ideas and it took off…becoming part of the game.
There weren’t enough buckets for everyone, so this sweet girl developed her own bear-crawl game. It also took off and several children participated in this creative game.
• Bear crawling- helps ‘build’ the child’s overall development. It strengthens the core muscles, leg muscles, arm muscles, and even works the eye hand coordination. This is a great activity to keep them busy and work on all areas of their development.
Pushing the bucket helps develop overall gross motor skills, focusing on the core and strengthening their core muscles.
• Core muscles- are important because they help us sit, stand, jump, and balance.
• Vestibular processing is taking in sensations about the pull of gravity through the inner ear and then responding to these sensations. Pushing, pulling, lifting, and carrying, all help develop and enhance the child’s proprioception and it feels good! They love it!
• Problem solving- the children ended up working together and problem solving this task. They thought it would be fun to ride on the bucket, but quickly realized it was too heavy.
• Communicating- in order to problem solve together, you must communicate. In this particular situation the little boy asked her to move. She felt her idea was pretty good, and didn’t want to move. What happened? Yep, he pushed her off and she started crying. Both moms jumped in and explained to their children the causes and effect of their specific behaviors.
• Social skills need to be taught through play!!!!
Building All Children
“And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, “Let us rise up and build.” so they strengthened their hands for the good work. ~Nehemiah 2:18