Just as many nurseries are reluctant to let under-threes loose with a pot of paint (see Nursery World, 8 February 2001), so they also shy away from letting the youngest children in their care enjoy the delights of sand and water. It's a shame, because under-threes can derive huge benefits and great pleasure from such play.
Children learn about the world around them through their senses and the physical manipulation of their environment, making sand and water a rich area for learning.
Small babies are often fascinated to watch dripping, flowing, sprayed or pouring water. They enjoy the sensation of handling sand, letting it trickle through their fingers on to bare toes. They like to hear the sounds of water and sand pouring from buckets. And they can taste and drink water.
If we sit a baby next to two small containers of sand, one dry and one wet, we present him with the opportunity to explore the same material in very different ways. Both will feel different and be manipulated differently. If we introduce cups, jugs, strainers and funnels, the differences between wet and dry sand will further become obvious to the child during his exploration.
Such play also helps develop a child's fine motor skills and hand-eye co-ordination. If children are encouraged to use the full range of movements in the wrists and hands, the finer movements of their hands will become increasingly precise, enabling them to draw and write later on, and to more fully appreciate and use this dexterity in their creative play with other materials.
The improved manipulative skills and sensory awareness achieved through sand and water play in turn stimulate a child's curiosity, encouraging exploration and discovery. They will improve concentration, memory and observation skills, help children to reason, solve problems and decide preferences, and begin to understand concepts such as size, colour, weight and texture.
Sand and water play will give practitioners a ready opportunity to observe this wide range of emerging abilities in the babies and toddlers in their care.
Good practice tips
There are many ways in which practitioners can improve and add variety to the sand and water play that they offer children.
* Vary the activities. The more ways in which the materials are presented, the greater the children's interest and range of experiences and the more confident and comfortable the children become in using the resources.
* Change regularly both the containers and the accessories for sand and water.
* Allow the children plenty of time to explore.
* Present the children with a carefully chosen selection of accessories, and store the rest neatly nearby.
* Make sure each experience is appropriate to the abilities of the children and enables them to play freely, explore and experiment.
* Adding bubbles, food colouring or soap flakes to water gives it a very different look and texture, and will stimulate the young child to manipulate and experiment with it.
* Make the most of your available outdoor space.
* Provide paddling pools and garden hoses to give hours of delight as the toddlers and young children immerse themselves, sit, splash, jump in, squirt and pour the water.
* Provide spades, scoops, spoons and scales to give opportunities for measuring and comparing.
* Make available buckets, tubs, funnels, tins, and both dry and wet sand so that children can explore size, shape, capacity and the concepts of full or empty.
* Encourage the children to dig, fill, pour, pat, tunnel, push or squeeze sand in a large bowl, deep tray or outside pit.
* Challenge the children to scoop, drag and dig the sand away to discover the treasure that you have buried.
* Leave a pile of sand on the floor, pavement or table top to give the children the opportunity to press, lift and carry the sand.
* Provide babies and toddlers with a small washing-up bowl of water, a variety of containers and teaspoons, tablespoons, serving spoons, ladles and scoops. Encourage the children to use the spoons to transfer the water from the washing bowl to other containers or to use the spoons for pouring, splashing and dribbling the water.
* Encourage the children to 'paint' the walls, ground or steps with water, then watch the changes on the different surfaces as they dry in the sun.
Obviously, safety is an important consideration. However, adults being overly worried about potential hazards will detract from the range of children's play and learning that can take place. Practitioners should look for ways in which the adult can successfully engage in the child's play and extend the learning that occurs, without interrupting or spoiling the exploration. You should remain close to the child when using sand and water and be ready to assist, but remember that you are not central to the children's interaction with the resources and space they are using. NW
CASE STUDY
Sand does not always have to be presented to young children in a sand tray and water need not be confined to a trough, as the staff at Busy Bees Nursery in Durham firmly believe.
There, the babies are often stripped to their nappies and placed in a large boat with a shallow level of warm water. They are encouraged to splash gently with their hands and feet. Practitioners sometimes place balls in the water for the babies to 'chase' around or push balls to the bottom of the boat and wait for the squeals of delight when the babies see them bob to the top.
Water play is set up at least once a week, as is sand play, which is available to all the children over a year old.
For the sand play, the children have the freedom of an 2.5m x 1.5m outdoor sand pit - ideal for making great sandcastles.
'We think it's very important, because it is a different sensory experience for the children and they really enjoy it,' says nursery manager Claire Rogers.
SAND ACTIVITIES
* Sit the baby on the floor. Place a small bowl of dry silver sand next to her. Sprinkle the sand over her toes and fingers. Encourage her to pick some sand and trickle it into your hands and over your toes.
* Place a small bowl of dry silver sand on a low table. Place a jug of water beside it. Suggest to the toddler that he dips his hands into the dry sand. Describe it while he explores. Next suggest he pours some water on to the sand. Watch the change, adding more water until the whole bowl is wet sand. Allow the toddler to explore it again.
* Gather a small group of young children around a table and place a large bowl of dry silver sand on it. Give each child a small bowl and spoon to take a little sand into their bowl. Each child should choose a colour of food dye, mix it with the sand and then spread out on a tray to dry. Each child can pour their dry coloured sand into an empty plastic bottle to create a 'rainbow' of sand.
* Take two pillowcases. In one,place dry sand, in the other wet. Invite the children to feel inside each and play with the sand. Describe what they are feeling using appropriate vocabulary or, if they can, let them describe what they feel. Hide some familiar items in each pillowcase for them to find and identify.
* Take five plastic bottles, all the same size. Place a different amount of sand in each. Add water to two, so there are some with wet and some with dry sand. Talk about heavier and lighter. Use vocabulary of more, less, heaviest and lightest.
* Spread silver sand over a table top. Encourage the children to draw patterns with their fingers, pushing it off the top, sweeping it up, straining it through sieves, salt cellars and wheels.
