This past Friday, our infant, older infant, and toddler teachers completed additional hours of development in the Program for Infant Toddler Care (PITC).

Our day began reviewing our work as we discussed observation of fruit through looking at a picture of exotic fruit. Our predictions of what we thought about the fruit were deepened as they were handed exotic pieces of fruit that most teachers had not experienced before. They were tasked with cutting open these Jack Fruits, Starfruit, Lychee, Pitaya/Dragon Fruit, and Papaya and requested to taste these fruits and describe our thoughts/interactions with the fruit as we experienced the fruit. Teachers carefully carved open the fruits and explained the tastes like "if green had a taste...,” "it smells but tastes good," "It's juicy and sweet," or "sour." “BLAAK!" as one teacher made faces and rushed for a napkin to spit it out. Some fruits were squishy, stringy, smelly, sweet, too hard to cut, and odd shaped with thick hard shells/peels. The discussions flourished and everyone was a researcher and within the rise of communication and excitement, there was laughter and language development.

The opportunity to do this exercise reminded all of us that we have many perspectives and individual taste buds and to experience something new gives us more information in our discovery that varies from person to person or child to child. It helped us to understand that you cannot know a book by the cover. You must engage and experience with the child, be patient, offer language, be a facilitator in the learning while being a support in the process of learners. It isn't enough to think we know! As educators, we need to get in there and discover, and discuss our operations to help children to be curious while making the learning visible.

Infants and Toddlers experience things hundreds of times a day. Their brains are wired for learning through experience, as they play and interact in a supportive environment. Play is the “work” they need to learn and be curious for healthy development!

As we sat together as a team through the exercise, where we all knew one another, it was safe to take these risks to scaffold our learning experiences and a good reminder for all those in the lives of young children to continue to further children’s thirst for knowledge through supportive learning experiences.

FranDelJA Family Blog: Learning Experiences