Introduction

The learning resource is designed for Levi, who is at the crawling stage at the age of 9-10
months. The three pictures are related to the heuristic approach of learning in which the daily use
items are included that make sounds, give feel, smells, and child can interact. The basket
includes a pan, a tennis ball, a wooden, a squeezing ball, soft toys and a few egg cups. The major
features of the products like pans and wooden ladles can make sounds, squeezing balls can be
played by squeezing, the tennis ball can be thrown and then followed while crawling, egg cups
can be arranged to learn the patterns, and baskets can be used to teach the setting of the items. It
is also depicted in the pictures that the playing items are off daily life use, and there are different
colours of the items that also give the identification of the colours to the kid. Other than that, the
soft to the hard feel of items, different elements like rubber, metal etc., can provide the feel to the
hands to make the learning for the subconscious mind of the child to respond accordingly while
interacting next time.

Literature

Exploratory learning is the process in which the child uses all the senses. They use the sense of
sight, touching, smell, listening and following them. It gets influenced by the surroundings as
well to witness the responses of others while playing (Newton, 2015). For example, if a child is
tapping something and that is making a noise, then the response of the surroundings, as well as
the infant's senses, will combine to respond accordingly with the passing time. It is also
discussed that exploratory learning is related to long term cognitive development. There is a
correlation found in the exploration and measures. It is also argued that the heuristic play is a
play of exploration in which the infant responds to the different products as per their choices
(Siegal et al., 2021). In another study, it was revealed that the kids provided with the usual items
from the households during heuristic play without intervention had developed better exploration
skills after two months than the infants who had been engaged with the adult’s intervention. It
shows that the subjectivity among the infants should be promoted, and there should not be any
intervention from the adults in the supporting (Hughes & Cousins, 2017). It also enhances the
motor skills of the kids. It is also considered while designing the resource for infants in which
Levi can through the ball to follow it, and he can tap the ladle on the pan to make noise, the ball
can be squeezed to have the feel of the strength is in the hands of the kid. Furthermore, the
exploratory heuristic play stimulates the senses and critical thinking. The critical thinking of
making different sounds of the same pan by banging it in different places (Gopnik, 2020). If the
wooden ladle bangs, then the sound will be different from banging it on the ground. So, it creates
critical thinking to explore why the sound is different by banding different objectives.

Studies have shown that the visual sense activates first when an infant looks at something like a
colour or different shape. It leads to cognitive development through exploration as an infant
creates the tendency to touch it and learn more about items (Weatherhead et al., 2021). The
storing of visual information is a quickie in the memory that allows an infant to integrate the
information. The exploratory heuristic learning further leads to the development and calculation
that can help to explore further. For example, in the resource, the egg cups can be used to arrange
that can be done over time by Levi. On failure for few times, the cognitive development will lead
to putting those cups in one another that develops the cognitive skills (Sargent et al., 2014). It has
also been studied that the exploratory and heuristic play should be supported by the routine items
rather than special toys and products. It provides the known sounds and sights that are usually
visible in the household. This is the reason why the resource designed for Levi is also from the
daily living items to enhance their exploratory and cognitive skills.

Health and Safety

The health and safety of the infant is the primary concern in the activity of designing resources.
There are no sharp items used that can cut the infant or that can poke the eyes. There is nothing
so small that can be swallowed by the infant. Everything is washed and sanitized and then wiped
off to avoid any alienating effect while taking things in his mouth. Everything is durable except
the egg cups that can be replaced daily as the eggs are sued daily at the household, and those can
be replaced for the infant to play.
References

Gopnik, A. (2020). Childhood as a solution to explore–exploit tensions. Philosophical

Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375(1803), 20190502.

Hughes, A. M., & Cousins, J. (2017). Play birth to three: Treasure Baskets and Heuristic Play,
the legacy of Elinor Goldschmied (1910–2009). In The Routledge international
handbook of early childhood play (pp. 33-45). Routledge.

Newton, H. (2015). Autonomously Learning About Meaningful Actions from Exploratory

Behaviour.

Sargent, B., Schweighofer, N., Kubo, M., & Fetters, L. (2014). Infant exploratory learning:
influence on leg joint coordination. PloS one, 9(3), e91500.

Siegel, M. H., Magid, R. W., Pelz, M., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Schulz, L. E. (2021). Children’s
exploratory play tracks the discriminability of hypotheses. Nature
communications, 12(1), 1-9.

Weatherhead, D., Kandhadai, P., Hall, D. G., & Werker, J. F. (2021). Putting mutual exclusivity
in context: Speaker race influences monolingual and bilingual infants’ word‐learning
assumptions. Child Development, 92(5), 1735-1751.