Since I began my placement at the kindergarten at the
beginning of semester one, I have often observed children showing interest in
butterflies. Many children I have observed have been painting butterflies,
drawing butterflies and creating butterflies using different materials such as
pegs and different fabrics.
On one occasion at the kindergarten, I observed a girl who I
will name Sue for confidential reasons and she wanted to paint butterflies
with the water colour paints. She asked me to sit next to her and paint some
butterflies too, so I did. I found this to be an excellent experience as she
was very interested and focussed on painting butterflies. She decided to copy
the butterflies that I was painting which I found interesting. Sue kept asking
me which colours I was using so she could use the same colours and she was
trying very hard to copy the shapes of the butterflies that I was painting. I
also started talking to Jane about what types of butterflies she has seen and I
asked her questions such as what colours can butterflies be? How many legs does
a butterfly have? This experience wasn’t rushed and Jane really enjoyed it. At
the time I didn’t think much of this experience, but now that I look back on
it, I can see that there were many literacy and numeracy skills being used in
this experience. Sue was using literacy skills through communicating with me
and she was using numeracy skills through the shapes and patterns she was
painting to create the butterflies and also counting how many wings and legs
that the butterflies have. 
{Picture I took of the butterflies that Sue was painting with me}
A recent experience that I was able to observe last week was children using hot glue guns to create butterflies using wooden pegs, coloured lace paper and plastic jewels. I found this to be an excellent experience as children were using numerical skills to be able to create the shapes of the butterfly wings and create patterns on the wings of the butterflies. Also children were able to talk to each other about what they were creating and what materials they were using.
{ A picture I took of a couple of butterflies that the children made using pegs and materials}
From observing the children creating the butterflies, it has inspired me to plan an experience to build onto what they have already been doing with creating and learning about butterflies. On Pinterest I saw an experience which involves dipping folded paper towels into different food colourings to create patterns and then using these paper towels to create a butterfly by tying pipe cleaners around the towel to create wings and a body. I think this would be an excellent experience for the children as they would be able to learn numeracy and literacy skills as it would help them with their pattern making skills, it shows them how colours can be created when they are mixed with others and they can also talk to the teachers and talk to each other while creating the butterflies. I will be able to link this experience with an outcome from SACSA and the EYLF too. This experience can also give teachers opportunities to talk to children about facts of butterflies too.
Since beginning the literacy and numeracy class at university I have been able to be more aware of how numeracy and literacy is being used to the experiences at the kindergarten and this has helped me to be able to know how to plan literacy and numeracy related experiences for the children. I have learned that through any experience that the children participate in, there are numeracy and or literacy skills that they can learn. I really believe that my ability to observe and offer literacy and numeracy experiences has been strengthened now that I am aware of how literacy and numeracy can be taught through experiences in an early childhood setting. I believe my knowledge of how numeracy and literacy can be taught in experiences has been strengthened now as before I started the literacy and numeracy class for birth to four at university, I was very limited in my understanding of how literacy and numeracy is present in experiences that children do. Now I am able to look at how everything is done in a different way as I can look at experiences and really be able to notice what types of literacy and numeracy development is happening in those experiences :)
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