<strong>How the Discovery Area Promotes Development</strong>

Young children wonder about the world around them. They think to themselves:

• I wonder what will happen if I push this button.

• I wonder what the bunny feels like.

• I wonder why my plant died.

• I wonder how I can make a bigger bubble.

The Discovery Area is a place to find the answers to these kinds of questions with few right or wrong answers. It is a place to spark curiosity and wonder using new and interesting materials. In the Discovery Area, children can use their senses to touch, feel, taste, smell, and see. They can <em>act </em>on objects and <em>observe </em>what happens next. You can help nurture children’s curiosity. When you join children in the Discovery Area and pose questions or wonder aloud, children respond by using their thinking skills to investigate and explore. In the Discovery Area, all areas of development can be enhanced.

<strong>Social/emotional development</strong>

Children learn to work together as they explore, make discoveries, and solve problems. They take care of living things such as classroom pets and plants, and they learn classroom rules for using materials safely and responsibly.

<strong>Physical development</strong>

Children develop their fine motor skills when they use eyedroppers to squeeze colored water onto wax paper or pick up a dead insect with tweezers. They develop dexterity and eye-hand coordination as they turn gears, take apart a broken toy, and pick up paper clips with a magnet. When they measure ingredients to make Silly Putty and then squeeze, pull, stretch, and bounce it, children practice many different fine motor skills. They strengthen their gross motor skills as they pull the rope on a pulley, create shadows on the wall using their bodies, or run in place to feel their pulse.

<strong>Cognitive development</strong>

Children use all the process skills when they observe and ask questions about the world around them. They watch plants and animals with great curiosity and make predictions about how they change, move, and react to different conditions. Children organize their thoughts by classifying, comparing, measuring, counting, and graphing objects. They represent their findings in drawing, writing, and by creating models.