Imagine yourself immersed in a room full of paper: streaming from the ceiling, adorning the walls and swelling into a mountainous heap in the center of the room. Aha’s paper play-lab provides babies and young children opportunities to explore the sound, feel and texture of paper, paper, paper.

Or what if you and your child discovered a room full of textures: Mobile, varied and changeable textures! An active pouring environment where you dig, lift, bury, pour and even discover the effects of angle and weight relationships; full of tools and materials to experiment, invent and play with? Pouring provides opportunities to explore the texture, track the sound and movement patterns of sand, rice, oats and other pour-able materials.

In our fabric class children explore a soft world full of another type of textures; where you will discover things that are smooth, silky, velvety, furry and stretchy. Smaller textured pieces and materials encourage fine motor, or tactile exploration; large diaphanous sheets of fabric bring a vastness that encourages children’s broader exploration and gross motor, or whole body, play.

Paper, Pouring, Fabric...or Reflection, Clay and Water; these are just examples of the range of materials used to create our wonderful, multifaceted, creative immersive environments – or “play labs”.

Play Labs are where children and parents play, explore, discover, experience and learn. Unlike traditional toys or play equipment, with predefined ways to use it, we build our creative play labs from what we call open ended materials; materials that have endless possibilities for your child’s true, deeper learning and discovery.

In open ended labs setting also invite children and adults into rich social explorations, which are at the foundation of all learning for young children. And our teachers are there to help you and your child both explore and discover. In the lab we help you with suggestions for tuning into and extending your child’s explorations. To understand how your child learns.

Babies, Toddlers and Preschoolers; when you and your child enter the Aha play-lab environments, unique and unpredictable play and learning opportunities are bound to follow.