Skye is two years six months and is well settled at nursery. She is often observed collecting and transporting things, particularly out in the garden and likes moving objects in and out of containers. She sits on the grass with Nicola and together they play with items in a basket. Nicola knows Skye well and is tuned into her interests. She responds to Skye's lead and doesn't dominate or direct the play. A conversation develops naturally between the two of them. Skye already knows the word 'treasure' and uses it confidently. They look at a pretty stone and Nicola provides the word 'jewel'. Together they fill one item with other smaller objects. Skye accurately predicts that a large stone won't fit and queries whether a smaller one will. Nicola encourages her to experiment to find out. They exclaim with pleasure when they have filled it and Skye invites another child to look. Skye then uses some of the 'treasure' to make a face image on a slice of tree trunk.
GOOD PRACTICE
1 Skye is obviously familiar with 'treasure baskets' and probably experienced them at nursery when she was much younger and before she was mobile, but what Nicola and Skye are doing here is not treasure basket play.
As Anita Hughes describes in 'Learning & Development: Treasure baskets and heuristic play - First choice' (Nursery World, 8 April 2009), 'While collections of interesting objects will delight and intrigue those in all age groups, the integrity of the treasure basket's practical approach will be distorted and diluted if we forget that it was developed for babies'. Ideally, regular treasure basket sessions as a baby (and before she was mobile) will have provided Skye with lots of rich sensory experiences and periods of intense concentration. This 'neural activity' will have played an important part in building and nourishing her brain...
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