Week 3

What skills can be developed by collecting?

Reading Chapter 2 on 'Collecting' from Techniques for Teaching Young Children, MacNaughton, G & amp; Williams, G (2009), opened my mind to new ideas and theories that I've never thought about before. To me, collecting is gathering things you like such as objects to form a collection you can keep for display. I never knew that it can be a teaching technique to help children learn through the process of gathering things and how it can help them learn to sort, classify, organise and match things together.

When I was younger I remember collecting shells at the beach because it had the sound of the sea when i placed it against my ear. It never occurred to me that collecting these shells actually helped me to know how to compare the shapes and sizes. Reading this chapter, it made me realise how the collection of things really help a children's development. I only thought that collecting things was only because it sparked children's interest rather than benefiting their development and skills. What also didn't occur to me was that collections don't have to be just objects, it can be sounds or words as well which i found quite interesting. What I also found intriguing was that a collection can be used to build children's counting skills. Children can learn to count just by looking at a collection of objects rather than just counting numbers.

Collecting also helps children to determine shapes, size, colour, sound, smell and texture. It helps them learn how to organise, classify and sort out which category it belongs to. As a teacher, I can help children strengthen their collections by displaying them in a glass cabinet with their description next to their collection. This can help them identify and match the labels on the item to encourage them to take care of it. It can also helps them to classify the contrast and comparisons of things. This shows that collecting enhances numerous skills to support children's development.