A sciencing programme and young children's exploratory play in the sandpit

Abstract

A six-week sciencing programme, directed at stimulating exploratory play, was implemented with 2- and 3-year-olds in a day-care centre. The core of the programme consisted of guided play with children in the centre's sandpit. The effectiveness of the programme was determined with ecologically valid methods consisting of pre- and post-observations of children's exploratory behaviour during free sandpit play in the experimental group as well as in a control group. A systematic observation scheme for exploratory play, the Exploratory Play Scale, was used for this purpose. The experimental group showed an increase in level of exploratory play from pre- to post-observations, while the control group did not. This study shows that a small-scale sciencing programme can have an effect on children's level of free exploratory play.

Keywords:

• Day-care setting
• Effect study
• Exploratory play
• Science
• Young children

This study was funded by the Dutch Curious Minds program, which is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, and the Platform Bèta Techniek. The research of Maartje Raijmakers was partly funded by a VIDI grant (016.075.336) from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

We would like to thank the children, parents, day-care teachers and Anna Jonkman from the STEK day-care centres. We would also like to express appreciation to Nico Notebaart, René van de Belt, and Coos Hakvoort for their audiovisual advice and technical support.

Notes

¹A table with short descriptions and examples of all EPS levels can be provided on request. Table 1 in the results section shows short descriptions and examples of observed high-level exploratory play (EPS levels 3 and 4).

²An appendix with a complete list of the play objects can be provided on request.

³An alpha level of .05 was used for all statistical tests.

⁴One could argue that in an Exploratory Play Scale, level 4 (“object replacement”) is not per se higher than level 3 (“exploratory play”/“construction”). Therefore we repeated the analysis of the data with level 4 recoded to level 3. The results are comparable with the original scoring: In the experimental and control groups, significant associations between Exploratory Play and Time were found, χ²(2) = 22.06, p = .00 (experimental group), χ²(2) = 14.79, p = .00 (control group) and these associations were in opposite directions.

⁵In the analyses in this study we did not model dependencies between participants. This type of modelling would only have been possible with a bigger sample of day-care centres.

⁶These analyses were also repeated with recoded data (see footnote 4). The results for the same matched sample remain equal: experimental and control group are equal on pre-observations (experimental group: M = 2.20, SD = 0.08, n = 7; control group: M = 2.21, SD = 0.11, n = 7). Scores for the post-observations differed between experimental and control group, t(12) = 2.9, p = .01 (two-sided).

⁷The main effect of initial exploratory play level is expected on the basis of regression to the mean.