《小蜗牛找房子》- 爬呀爬
这一期我们注重的是肢体动作。孩子从出世到学会基本的爬、走、跑、跳等都需要练习，所以我们也希望通过这一期给他们设立的活动让他们锻炼大肌肉和小肌肉。
上个星期孩子们投票认为我们故事里的主角查理会喜欢住在瓶盖及气泡膜的房子，所以这一期我们给孩子们提供了超轻粘土，瓶盖，气泡膜，以及扭扭棒来给查理建个房子。虽然材料简单，但是我们注重的是过程，而重要的是这个过程是孩子孩子们主张的。
通过拉、捏、搓、拍、压，捏，孩子们可以锻炼小肌肉， 通过爬、蹲、甩、叠，他们可以锻炼大肌肉。
我认识了一位非常热爱植物的网友，并在她的社交媒体上看到她提到了在自己花园里找到蜗牛，便问她是否能把它们留给我。蜗牛很少在白天活动，所以要让孩子们看到真正的蜗牛有时候并不容易。这一期我希望能让孩子们有机会近距离观察蜗牛， 并通过观察学会用身体表达自己。除此之外，通过让孩子触碰蜗牛，我们也能够提醒孩子们要好好善待最小的动物，让孩子们产生同理心。
Charlie Finds a Home - Crawling and crawling!
This week, our focus is on bodily movements! Right from Day 1 when our little ones first came into the world, they are always actively honing their gross motor skills as they repeatedly engage in and practice each and every single movement, including crawling, walking, running and jumping. Understanding the developmental chart that children typically undergo, we thus set up activities that would allow them to work their core muscle groups, both large and small.
During the previous session, most children had voted that Charlie, our main character in Charlie Finds a Home, would prefer to stay in a house made of bottle caps and bubble wrap. In favour of their choice, we provided each child with air-dried clay, bottle caps, bubble wrap and colourful pipe cleaners to build Charlie a house they think he would love! The materials they had may be simple, but what we emphasise on is not how fanciful or elaborate the final product is, but rather on giving children the autonomy to make their own decisions throughout this creative process, freely choosing where, how and what to use to build the house they envisioned in their minds.
Importantly, during this entire session, the kids worked their smaller core muscle groups as they pulled, pinched, rubbed, smacked, and pressed; and their larger muscle groups as they crawled, squatted, swang and stacked.
Coincidentally, I got to meet and befriend a plant enthusiast online, and as I stumbled on her social media post speaking of her encounters with snails in her own garden and asked if she could keep the snails for me. Snails are nocturnal so it can be hard for children to observe how snails behave in their daily lives. I hope that by bringing the snails in, children could go up close and interact with the snails and observe how snails move. Through this provocation, we want to encourage children to use physical movements to communicate, as well as understand what it means to be gentle and kind to the smallest of creatures.
