From three to five years of age, children continue to develop in key areas of cognition.

The most obvious change from toddlerhood is the extraordinary increase in the child’s ability to mentally or symbolically represent concrete objects, ideas, and events.

This increasing ability to use mental representation allows children to make plans before taking action, and their activities take on a more purposeful direction.

This varies from child to child, but can be developed with hands-on activities. To help facilitate this, we created small volcanoes as part of our Hawaiian theme. Children started by placing dirt onto trays.

They then added blue gravel as their “water”.

Following, they used their pointer fingers to poke a hold into their “mountains”.

After this, they added baking soda, and for the grand finale, orange-colored vinegar.

They gleefully watched as their volcanoes “erupted” before their eyes!

Stretching for more than 1200 miles in the Central Pacific, Hawaiian coral reefs account for about 85 percent of all coral reefs in the United States.

Because it is under water and not visible, the importance of the reef remains largely hidden – including its importance not only to the ocean environment and its inhabitants, but also to humans.

To help us better understand these complex life systems, we created our very own coral reefs out of sponges, sea shells, blue gel, and toy sea creatures.

The objective of our many projects, is to develop the concept (in this case, a coral reef) first.

By using concrete materials, your little ones can learn the basic concepts of ideas that they cannot experience firsthand.

Your young students use concrete hands-on learning materials that make abstract concepts more clear.