Many of my most pleasurable memories of working with young children arose from the visits we did together. I will never forget the time a child sneaked on to the surface of the moon and made a run for the astronauts at the Science Museum. And I will always remember the intense enjoyment of a child with special needs leaping into the sea and screaming with the thrill of cold water splashing all over and around him. There is something delightful and mind-expanding about taking children beyond the four walls of their settings and encountering something new together.
When children come back from trips, they play out their experiences. They draw things about them, build things about them and make many other representations of what they saw and what they did.
These exciting first-hand experiences are what Chris Athey* calls the 'stuff' that fills and alters the structures of children's minds.
Her research into children's thinking shows how children constantly take their experiences from trips back into their nursery. Trips broaden children's experiences: quite simply, they give children more stuff to think about. Just as importantly, children take their interests and patterns of thinking with them when they go out. The child who is fascinated by throwing objects up in the air will be absolutely thrilled by the Flight Lab in the Science Museum, where she can direct powerful gusts of air to propel a beach ball upwards. The experience deepens her experience and understanding of what makes things move.
The implications of these findings for practice are clear. Trips are a fun day out, but they are also an important part of the early years curriculum. They can give children fantastically rich, first-hand experiences. The children can then use these first-hand experiences back in their setting as the 'stuff' that stimulates their play, their drawing, building and painting.
Careful planning by practitioners makes a crucial difference in this respect. When a group of children from Woodlands Park Nursery Centre visited the Science Museum recently, the practitioners planned to extend the children's thinking about maps and routes. At the pre-trip planning meeting, all the parents were given a tube map. There was a discussion about how the children could be encouraged to follow the progress of the tube along the Piccadilly Line and count the stops. On the day, several children were very interested in this, and began to ask questions about the other tube lines, and how the Underground runs beneath London.
Back in the nursery, a corner was reserved to be a tube train with big cardboard sliding doors in front of rows of chairs. A tape recording of the journey played in the background, with the announcements of each station name and the swishing sounds of the doors opening and closing. There were more copies of the tube maps for the children to use. This resourcing enabled many children to play at going on the tube, to plan their journeys and to listen out for their stop. Some of the children also created their own maps to use. Careful planning by the practitioners meant that what could have been the most mundane part of a day out - the long tube journey - sparked off hours of imaginative play for the children as well as the chance to learn about maps.
* Reference: Extending thought in young children: a parent-teacher partnership by Chris Athey (Paul Chapman Publishing, 18.99)
Julian Grenier is deputy head of Woodlands Park Nursery Centre, part of the London Borough of Haringey's Early Excellence Network
* Case study: Making waves
Moving water fascinated a number of children in the twos and threes room at Woodlands Park Nursery Centre, so the staff planned for the whole group to visit the Garden at the Science Museum.
Despite its name, the Garden is actually an indoor area in the basement. It includes hands-on and large-scale water, sound, light and building experiences for young children.
In line with the Centre's policy, the staff arranged a pre-visit meeting with the children's parents well in advance of the trip. At the meeting, parents were given a leaflet about the trip, that included a rough timetable of the day, the travel arrangements and details of the experiences available in the Garden. It also had ideas for parents to support and extend their children's learning on the day.
Although nearly all of the parents went out to work, the majority came on the visit because of the status it was given as a key opportunity for parents and children to learn together. Parents were also encouraged to record their children's questions during the day. These questions formed a display back in the nursery and gave a powerful insight into how children experienced and were challenged and intrigued by their experiences on the day.
On arrival at the museum, the group had to walk through the space gallery to reach the Garden. Some children were fascinated by space. The guidelines for the day stated that parents could spend as much time as they wanted in this part of the gallery before rejoining the main group in the garden.
Two of the children especially enjoyed the NASA video of a rocket taking off. Later that week, they used the bottom of the nursery climbing frame as their rocket, and experiment with numbers to create their own countdown.
For most of the children, the water play area of the Garden was the most memorable experience of the day. The children enjoyed the constant flow of water. They dammed up different areas and used the water to spin wheels or send boats careering downwards.
Later that week in the nursery, staff used a hose pipe and two water trays linked together by old guttering to give the children more experiences of flowing water.
Further information
You can read about Woodlands Park Nursery Centre's policy on educational visits at www.wpnc.ik.org- 'documents section.