1.1 Clearly describes how the concepts are connected to & supported by social Relationships & contexts

Week 6 Reading blog 

User - What do I do with this. . .

Yellow and blue make green

While observing Tommy (4year old) at the play dough table I noted that he was mixing the two available colours together. I asked him what he was doing and he informed me that he was going to making green play dough by mixing the yellow and blue play dough together. He had been at the paint station the previous day and had played with different colour paints. Another little boy and girl, Johnny and Sally joined him at the table. 

Sally - "What are you doing?" 
Tommy - "I want to make green play dough." 
Johnny - "let me help too"
Sally - "Oh, I know how we can do that"
Tommy - "I made green with my paint, I recon we can do it with play dough too."
Johnny - "Can you pass me some yellow."
Tommy - "Look, we have different green play dough."
Sally - "I want more blue"
Johnny - "more blue makes it darker green compared to the green that i have."
Tommy -"I made a pond with frogs. Look, I have lots of frogs. 1, 2, 3, 4. . ."

Tommy continued to count the frogs on his piece of green play dough. The two other children started to count with him. Sally stopped after 12 but stayed and look on while Tommy counted the remaining frogs and Johnny counted only until 7 then moved outside to another group of boys.

Since the start of this degree, particularly this semester, I have become more aware of how much children learn from their play experiences and interactions with their peers.  The three children at the play dough table were building on their prior knowledge of literacy and numeracy particularly the mixing of colors and  number sense by chatting and contributing their thoughts to the conversation.

From this experience Tommy and the other two children were able to conclude that when they mix different colours they would come up with another colour. They also learnt that depending on how much blue or yellow were used different shades of green would result. Light green, dark green and lime colours were observed when different amounts of yellow and blue play dough were combined, this interaction built on their literacy and vocabulary. The different possible colours that result from the combination of blue and yellow.  By counting the frogs in Tommy's the children show and learn from each each other, together they were beginning to develop an understanding of  mathematical concepts, especially one to one ratio and the concept of more and less. For example when they mixed the blue and yellow play dough to make green, together they figured out that more blue would result in a darker green while more yellow, less blue resulted in an almost apple green. 

This experience and many like this make me appreciate just how valuable free play and communication is to children and how much it supports their learning.