Secrets of Materials project 

The Secrets of Materials project was launched by Little Barn Owls and involves 4 other nursery settings that are inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach. The children have been in possession of their new pods for a couple of weeks now and we wanted to show you the beautiful collections the nursery settings produced.

We start today with the THAMES TIDDLERS' pod. Introduced by Rachel Robertson, Atelierista

Myself and two staff members, began the project by gathering a group of children together and setting a time slot by for us to all work together every week. We started by initiating a discussion with the children and explaining that we would be collecting some materials together to send to children at another nursery. We asked various questions such as, what could we collect? What would the other children like to play with? Can you find something to send to the children? Here are some of their responses.

Tiann 'Erm scissors' 
Sophie 'Feathers and a handset' 
Spencer 'cones' 'Houses' 
Jack-Louis 'Not real ones' (He comments about the houses) 'Big houses don't fit in the box maybe just a small house' 
Poppy 'pencils in it'

We then asked the children if they would like to draw something to put in our box. Sophie begins by drawing bracelets with beads. Tiann, Spencer and Poppy begin to create similar drawings of various pieces of Jewellery.

The conversations continue and we start to explore 'jewellery'. Where could we find it? And how we could make it? This led to our end pod containing various types of jewellery collected by parents, staff and children on a trip to the local shops and charity shops.