《小蜗牛找房子》
《小蜗牛找房子》 叙述了一只小蜗牛的贝壳不小心被踩烂了之后，花园里的朋友如何帮他想办法找到栖身之处。
我们这一次办的班与之前不同，同一批孩子将在每个星期三与我们见面，一共4堂课。每一堂课都会为孩子们设立不一样，但有连贯性的体验。
这次报名的的孩子们大部分都在两岁左右，我们希望提供给孩子自由选择的机会，于是设立了4 个不同的体验区 – 第一堂主要是以效仿蜗牛的质感为主，让孩子们通过触摸感应探索，试验。孩子们可以制造史莱姆 (slime)，变粘滑 (goop), 观察水彩滴在盐上所出现的效果(salt trail)以及为一个“花园的篱笆”涂上颜色。
给孩子们提供选择是希望能培养孩子们独立的思考，然后自己决定想怎么玩。我们鼓励家长不要担心孩子们在限时内无法完成所有的活动。结果不重要，我们注重的是过程。孩子们到了一个新的环境，还有在接触一些在家里不经常有机会接触的道具和材料时，难免会有些谨慎，是需要时间适应。
孩子刚开始不喜欢某一个材料不代表他接下来就会一直抗拒。有时候孩子们在观察别的孩子如何与材料互动后，自然会想参与，而在那样的情况下孩子是自己作出选择而不是因为受到家长的影响。这不仅就能培养孩子们独立的分析和判断能力，也提高了孩子们的信心。
下一堂，我们将设立的体验区主要会让孩子们探索故事里提到的一些因果关系。
Charlie Finds a Home
Charlie Finds a Home tells the story of a snail named Charlie, whose shell got accidentally trampled on. The author traces Charlie’s adventures as he goes on a journey with his friends in the garden to find a new home.
This toddler’s workshop is unlike any of the past ones we had – this time round, we are having a 4-weeks programme, where the same group of children come together every Wednesday. Each lesson is designed with a different objective, but they build on each other to ultimately form a coherent experience for the children.
Our attendees for this workshop are mostly around 2 years of age. As we hope to provide the children with the freedom of choice, we set up 4 different areas, all of which based on the texture of snails, aiming to let children explore and experiment through sensorial and hands-on experiences. For session 1, we prepared 4 different sensorial areas, where children can freely make slime, goop, observe the effect of salt trails, as well as paint on a “garden fence” we had made.
We are a process-based programme, so we wanted children to approach and explore the materials at their own time, make independent choices and figure out cause and effect. We do want to encourage parents not to worry about completing every station – because when children are placed in a new environment, experiencing novel materials that they might not have had the chance to feel or touch previously, they may be more guarded and so would need more time to adapt to their surroundings.
Children may not always respond positively to a given stimulus. However, while they may not like something very much initially, they may change their minds after watching how other children interact with the same material. Understandably, all parents would want to help their children make the “right” decision, but giving children the autonomy to make their own decisions without external influence boosts not only their critical thinking skills, but also their self-confidence.
Next week, we will be setting up sensorial areas again, but it will be based on some cause-and-effect mentioned in the story.
