Invitations to Create Love Potions

So much of the magic of early childhood is creating wondrous concoctions. Today we invited the children to create potions with Colorations Liquid WaterColors & Metallic BioColors, Flowers, Dish Soap, Water, Potion Bottles, Loose Parts, and of course lots of LOVE. 

Inviting a child to create any type of concoctions encourages so many levels of layered learning while they create and explore materials. When a child is adding, scooping, pouring, transferring, picking, mixing, and stirring ingredients it fosters creativity and enables children to experiment with science and math concepts. Children begin to understand and investigate math concepts with ideas such as more/less, same/different, many/few, empty/full, before/after, greater than/less than, etc. Science concepts are introduced through exploring physics principles such as the effects of force (increasing the waterflow through increased force); effects of gravity (water runs downhill), observing the state of materials changing (solid to liquid), color theory (mixing to create new,  etc.  

The social learning comes together while they collaborate, concentrate, take turns, problem solve, persevere, and self-regulate with all the materials. Children also gain physical learning (fine & gross motor, eye-hand coordination) through the precision in pouring/mixing/transferring/scooping/etc. Through sensory play, they are exploring all of the materials (water, nature, soap, bottles) through all of their senses  which helps retain information better and at their developmental level.

All to say, however, a child creates through invitations such as this, in a sink or bathtub, or the great outdoors, makes it engaging, all encompassing, and ultimately helps encourage the continuation of igniting that spark of curiosity when exploring science, math, language, color theory, and natural materials.