Playing with natural materials
“If by materials we want to indicate everything that can be used to make something, that serves to produce, to invent, to build, we would have to talk about everything that surrounds us, from water to land, from stones to animals, from body to words … even to meadows and clouds ” (Tonucci, 1990 en Vila & Cardo 2005, p.47).
Natural materials are all those objects that are part of our life, give quality to creativity and games, such as kitchen utensils, food, objects that nature offers us, etc. (Vila & Cardo, 2005). However, we are going to focus on those ones nature gives us, among others, we will mainly have pinecones, sticks and stones.
Since, as stated in decree 143/2007 of the BOC (2007), one of the pedagogical principles, of this stage of Early Childhood Education, is that children discover the physical and social characteristics of the environment in which they live, something that we will carry out through the manipulation and experimentation of these natural materials.
As stated by Vila & Cardo (2005), those materials are beneficial for several reasons: they offer a wide variety of sensations when manipulated, they have various qualities that market materials do not offer, they help to create play spaces, they stimulate creativity, curiosity and the desire to learn, they also offer information about the environment in which we find ourselves and make us use the exterior spaces of the school as educational places. In addition, we have them at our disposal and they are cheap.
And, we cannot forget that, “children need to explore the environment to know and understand the reality that surrounds them, enjoying a manipulative game, while creating their own experiences on the qualities of each element” (Sugrañes et al, 2012, p.74). For this reason, it is very enriching to open the school to the natural context that surrounds us.
“The persistence of the same material cannot stimulate the child to maintain his interest, nor can it satisfy the lively and tireless curiosity he has for the world around him, of which he is increasingly aware” (Goldschmied, 2000, p.49).
Finally, we would meet one of the objectives set out in article 5 of the curriculum of the first cycle of Early Childhood Education: h) Encourage the development of sensory and
perceptual capacities to promote curiosity about the immediate environment and the elements that make it up. configure, attributing a significance to them.
In conclusion, all these natural materials also allow us to work on the contents of the different areas of the curriculum, such as logical-mathematical or artistic expression.
References
BOC. (31 de octubre de 2007). Consejo de Gobierno. Obtenido de https://boc.cantabria.es/boces/verAnuncioAction.do?idAnuBlob=124522
Goldschmied, E. y Jackson, S. (2000). La educación infantil de 0 a 3 años. Madrid: Morata.
Sugrañes, E., Alós, M., Andrés, N., Casal, S., Castrillo, C., Medina, N. & Yuste, M. 2012. Observar para interpretar. Actividades de vida cotidiana para la educación infantil (2-6). Barcelona: Graó
Vila, B., & Cardo, C. (2005). Materiales de exploración. En B. V. Cardo, Material sensorial (0-3 años) Manipulación y experimentación (pp. 47- 49). Barcelona: Graó
Authorship
Tamara Cagigas y Sara González, 2020.