The Smell of Lemon

The children had shown some interest in the lotion I was putting on my hands. I have a lemon lotion and a strawberry lotion. They smelled both of them on their hands and compared the smells, talking about which one they liked the most.

The following week we were making lemonade. We began the day with having a lemon on the table and, after the first group of children had arrived, we cut it open. They compared the smell of the lemon to the hand lotion. "It smells like the lemon," they decided.

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Fascinating Sunflower Sprouts

When planting sunflower seeds, one of the children wanted to do it on his own. He got a white plastic bottle from the recyclables shelf, added some dirt, a couple of sunflower seeds, water and took it outside to put it in the sun. Such independence. Such initiative. It was fascinating to see that different children were interested in different aspects of the process.

Tape Man

Some of the children put blue tape over their mouth. Usually I would have said something like, "Take the tape off your mouth. It's not for putting on your mouth." Instead I thought of Tape Man (with some pride, being from New Zealand). I thought of creativity. I thought of art. So we sat together for whole group time, some with tape on their mouth. I said, "I've got something to show you." When they first say him one of them said, "It's scary." I reassured them that it's not too scary and that he's being funny. So they started to laugh. Pretty soon there was no more tape on mouths (not that I minded if there was, it's just hard to laugh). Thank you Tape Man for reminding us that creativity begins with exploration in play.

NZ Teacher

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