May flowers are here which means it’s the perfect time to make flower soup. You can go on a nature walk or hike, gather flowers, sticks, leaves and twigs. Provide a sensory bin, variety of bowls/Tupperware/pots&pans, mud kitchen, or this #gifted Excellerations® Outdoor Sensory Mixing Table. Ladels, utensils, whisks, strainers, & cups can be used as their tools for creating.
Making pretend soup with beautiful, colorful, diverse wild flowers is not only a great way for the children to enjoy some water play with flowers from the garden it incorporates nature within the home or classroom.
Children are able to scoop, pour & transfer materials from the one container into another with a variety of kitchen utensils & containers. The assorted containers & kitchen utensils help encourage exploration of measuring & mixing. Whenever water play is incorporated in an invitation it fosters creativity & enables children to experiment with science & math concepts. Children begin to understand & investigate with ideas such as more/less, same/different, many/few, empty/full, before/after, greater than/less than. Children also learn physics principles such as the effects of force (increasing the water flow through increased force); effects of gravity (water runs downhill) etc.
With all that math & science happening in an open ended way there is plenty of language development when a child discusses the ingredients, how they will create their mixtures, & so forth. The social learnings from water play include collaboration, concentration, turn taking, problem solving, perseverance, self-regulation, & more. Children also gain physical learning through water play, such as precision in pouring, eye-hand coordination, & other skills. Exploring water combined with nature is captivating, engaging, engrossing & absorbing to almost all children.
During our flower soup making Cy spotted a caterpillar that joined in on our fun. He has not stopped talking about it so every night we have been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.