I have always loved the Reggio approach to education. I incorporated a lot of its aspects into my classroom once upon a time. The above photo was on Pinterest and comes from atelierpourenfants.blogspot.fr I was so inspired by it.
I went in search of clay and decided to go to my local dollar store, because it's inexpensive and didn't know how well the project would go over. They only had rainbow clay and that's okay. 1) G loves rainbows and 2) it was cheap. I didn't want to invest a lot of money in clay if G was interested.
But G WAS interested - intrigued even. She loved molding the clay aka tree bases and adding different twigs to make the trees - big and small, straight up or "very branchy".
Roo, who is 20 months, also LOVED making the trees. She spent about 30 minutes making her trees. She likes to do everything that big sister does, but also this is her kind of project. She likes to figure things out.
The above was my Rainbow Forest.
This above photo is G and Roo's Rainbow Forest. G has plays to expand her Rainbow Forest. "We need to make it big enough for all the animals of the world." She said. I had to go pick up 4 more packs of Rainbow clay. In between breakfast and preschool this morning, we were making more trees for the Rainbow Forest. I smile, because I think in true Reggio fashion, we have a project lead by the child's interest and it is a project that it being added to and growing with the child's thoughts and imagination.
Have a fun and playful day
Mel
