Knowledge Acquisition in Early Childhood: An Analysis of Sand Play Activities

Abstract

Sand play activities are still rarely used as a source of learning to acquire children's knowledge at school. One of the factors is that parents often forbid their children to play in the sand with dirty excuses. Whereas with sand playing activities, children can easily explore according to their imagination and creativity and they can also develop three areas of development in acquiring knowledge, namely physical knowledge, knowledge of mathematical logic which is closely related to children's cognitive knowledge and social knowledge. The purpose of this study was to find out what knowledge was obtained in sand playing activities in early childhood. Respondents in this study were four children aged 3-4 years at Khalifah Daycare & Early Learning Center. The research instrument in this study was determined by the researcher himself, choosing information as a data source, collecting data using observation, interviews and documentation methods. Data were analyzed by following Miles and Huberman's interactive analysis model; data reduction, data display, and verification. This study shows that by doing sand play activities, children aged 3-4 years acquire four pieces of knowledge, including fine motor, logical-mathematical, social, and language skills.