After kids had a chance to explore the turtles and new play themes in sand, we moved the turtles to the water table. Using familiar materials in new ways often inspires children to notice physical differences or to shift their play themes. Children are still playing out themes of family life as they gather little turtles around a mom or dad, help a turtle go for a swim or feed them plants.
You may have noticed that our toy turtles, which were once in the sand table, have moved to the water. We often change what we offer in the sand and water to inspire different kinds of play. After some time to explore sand with toys for scooping and dumping, we added the turtle figures with tree discs, wooden stumps and leaves to see how kids would use them. Often, animal figures inspire family play in addition to object exploration related to sorting, collecting and filling containers. At the sand table, children assembled family groups on the wooden stumps, buried turtles in the sand and then dug them out, fed them leaf pieces, sorted turtles and filled cups and buckets with them.
Some children were invested in hiding the turtles in sand and having them return, much as parents go away and come back when children are at school. Now, they are finding new ways to play out this theme, hiding turtles under seaweed or helping them to swim away and then return to their turtle babies. Children continue to explore concepts of size and volume as they collect turtles in vessels that differ in size and shape from those we have in the sand table. These small changes often inspire subtle shifts in thinking that stimulate growth.
