Guest Post #playiceland - On the ice.

Delighted to have Unnur from Leikskólinn Stekkjarás guest posting again this week - amazing photos & story of how her class got to go skating on a nearby frozen lake.
"Before you all read this I can say this, the area we go to is with a lot of grass around the lake and the lake is quite shallow where we enter it, so it it more like a big puddle to start with. It had been frosty for quite a long time with us when we made this decision to go out on the lake and we knew that there were people on it the day before us.
And even after two weeks when we went back it was still quite frozen (in fact so frozen that I on my own would have gone out on it ) but we do not and never will take any risk with the children."

It is always fun when we try new things with the children and we did on this trip on the 8th of January. Our lake out in the woods was frozen solid so we could skate on it with out worrying at all if it would break fun, fun, fun. Of course we spoke to the children about safety before getting on the ice. We asked them what do we needed to do before we got on it and the were a few ideas like throw a stone, use a stick and send a teacher out on it before they went on it. Two teachers walked out on the ice and jumped up and down on it like Olympic trampolinists and nothing happened!  

After a good test the children got to go out on the ice and it was difficult to see who had more fun, children or teachers. It is nice to see how the children notice all the little things around them and this trip was no different, we saw a little spider frozen in the ice and it got some sympathy for being stuck in the ice but then we found a centipede and that is a creature we don't see very often. 

We also so a lot of strange pictures looking through the ice, some saw butterflies & some mushrooms. After sliding on the ice for a good while we slowly made our way back to school.

Two weeks later the kids were still talking about that trip on the lake and as preschool teachers we need to keep our eyes open for the opportunity to teach as we play so we used this opportunity to take the group back to the lake to find out if we could still go out on the ice. The weather was a lot warmer so we knew that it would not be safe to go out on the ice but it was not ours to say. We did come up with the question if they thought the ice was still safe even if the weather was warmer and we had some different opinion so off we went. When we got closer we saw that there was a lot of water on the lake so we knew that it would not be safe and some of the children were quick to notice as well but some thought it was still safe so what could we do? Yes like last time throw a stone, use a stick or get the teachers out on it, but this time they slide slowly out on the ice and it came clear quickly that it was NOT safe. This gave us the opportunity to talk about being safe around the water, never go out on the ice alone, always tell someone if they are playing around water and always test the ice before walking on it. 

Since we could not go on to the ice we decided to go to “Ulfaskógur” Wolf-forest like the children call it even though like some of them point out there are no wolves in Iceland! On our way there we found a dead bird that had to be buried and say a prayer for before we could go back to school. A trip that all of us will remember for a long time.