Thursday 21 April 2011

Heaping and Scattering? What could that possibly be?

When children follow a fascination in scattering they enjoy placing objects into a pile or scattering them into space for example they may tip all the bricks out onto the floor and/or scatter shredded paper or dry leaves.

One of the good things about children who scatter is that they like to heap. This can therefore be managed both ways. For example, scattering and then heaping is ideal because the child who wanted to throw the oats in this photo above also wanted to heap the oats thus encouraging him to tidy up after activities. Later in the blog I will gather some suggestions from staff around the nurseries and creches on how they manage our heapers and scatterers in the setting.

If a child is following a scattering schema offer them activities such as:
  • Shredded paper in troughs
  • Lolly pop sticks
  • Watering can with a rose
  • Dust pan and brush
  • Feeding the birds
  • Spray bottles
  • Sieves and colanders in sand and water
  • Whisks placed in liquid and taken out again whilst still spinning
  • Pasta, oats etc in flat trays or builders trays
  • Small Lego bricks/wooden blocks to scatter
  • Ball ponds

Allow children to scatter items into troughs, tuft trays, bowls; they can even throw wet sponges against a plastic sheet, use flours in flour shakers and blow and pop bubbles.

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