Happiness is.....

Lying in a soft, deep pile of leaves.

 Exploring with your friends in a river - hunting for trolls & crocodiles.

Making it safely across the river to the other side

Making it to the top

 Embracing all weathers

Outdoor Play Link up - Guest post - from USA

Once again, as I am on summer break I have turned to another fellow educator that I have begun to know & respect through the wonderful world wide web, the lovely Andrea McDougall, teaches the Bugs (2s/3s) class at Takoma Park Cooperative Nursery School, in Maryland, DC, USA. I was fascinated by the wonderful cardboard adventures she had with her 'students'  during the 2nd week of their Tink 2012 on Dens. Thanks Andrea for taking the time to write up a great post on how the cardboard adventure developed.

 

It takes a village to build a village!

It all begins with a challenge and many different solutions.  How to build a den with the materials provided.  The previous week during Tink 2012 World Tour, Dens at The Cooperative School  the students were given scrap wood, used moving pallets and a lot of bamboo.  The challenge was to build a water, wind and animal proof den (as determined by the students).  We had success as far as water and wind were concerned but we didn’t allow any bears in to test the wild animal factor.  This week the challenge was to build a strong and comfortable cardboard den (again, criteria determined by the children). 

Day one: with only 2 pieces of cardboard per student design a model of what you want to build outside.  We learned that a lot of tape was needed and if you worked in a team you had access to a lot more cardboard.

Day 2: take it outside and go big!  Again, given only 2, this time large sheets of cardboard, replicate your model.  What we learned is that changing the scale is hard to do and taping large sheets of cardboard is nearly impossible! It was a very frustrating day for many. It was also an opportunity to problem solve and come together as a group.

 Day 3:  get a lot more cardboard, start lashing and try a different kind of tape.  Success, except the structures were not dens.  The children had turned them into a village of stores, tea shops and yogurt shops with only one outlying homes/dens.  There was cooperation, bartering, selling and many thriving businesses. So what happened to the dens that were so successful the week before?  Maybe the proximity of the shelters took hold, maybe the lack of a water proofing test stretched their imaginations, maybe playing house/city in cardboard boxes is something more familiar and natural for children to do, or maybe the introduction of markers to draw the location where doors and windows should be cut allowed the children to decorate and label in a way that was not possible the week before.  Either way, just like in the book Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran, a whole world of imagination came together as a community.

 Day 4: let’s decorate!  Out came the paint and up went menus, hours of operation, and open and closed signs.  We also learned that paint weakens the cardboard making it sag and bend.  

This made the idea of dismantling much more palatable for Day 5.  Cardboard is only temporary after all!

My favourite post from the last link up was from my fellow co-host, Mama Pea Pod, I love lying on the ground just staring up at the clouds or trees etc. and every year love introducing this simple activity to a whole new generation of children. So I was delighted to see Sweet Pea enjoying this activity at the tender of age of 2, just relaxing on the grass with no particular agenda. Sometimes we just need to allow children to 'be' in the moment without hurrying them from activity to activity.

How did your kids play outdoors this week?

• Any kind of children's outdoor play-related posts are welcome!

We'd appreciate it if you included a link back to this post (either in your post or sidebar) to help us spread the word about the importance (and fun!) of outdoor play! In return, we'll gladly further share your post on Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest. Please feel free to grab the Outdoor Play Party button from the sidebar and/or include a text link back.

Please note that by contributing you are giving permission for an image and link to your post to be republished if featured. (If you have been featured, please feel free to grab the 'featured' button from the sidebar.) Share your ideas for outdoor play activities with us every other week! The linky goes live every second Friday at 12:01 GMT+1.

Top 10 books I love sharing with my class.

First off I have to confess that I am a reader, always have been, hope I always will be. So it is no surprise that I love to introduce a whole new class each year to the joy of books. Some years are easier than others, the class who have just left nursery were the biggest bookworms I'd ever come across, I hope they maintain this love of books. They read everywhere!

I love hearing parents say that their child has suddenly become interested in books since starting nursery, I like to think that it's because of our daily shared 20-30 minute story time. I hope during this time they begin to see the magic of getting lost in a story & how to make books come alive. I am always sad when you get a child of 3 or 4 who doesn't want to look at a book because they feel they can't as they can't 'read' it. This is why picture books are so important. I feel sorry for older children & adults who are denied the chance to enjoy picture books - I love that because of my job I can spend an hour in the children's section of a book shop exploring new books & enjoying old favourites.
I do not stick 100% to the words written in most books, adding my own parts to either enhance or lengthen the story.
So here are my top 10 I shared with my class, some old ones, some new ones. But there are actually 11 books because I had such trouble whittling it down to 10 & could go on for days listing my favourite books & have stuck in an extra one to start off with

I read this as an 8/9 year old & it had a deep impact on me & actually awakened a life long love of history in me. I read a lot of books & often forget who writes them so was so surprised that this one was written by an author that I admire so much & find timeless - Judith Kerr, so that leads me onto my first one I read every year with my class, it is so old-fashioned looking now but I have yet to meet a class who don't love it.

What child wouldn't love a big furry tiger to ring the doorbell some evening?

A classic tale & I love this version for the illustrations, I give the kids names - the days of the week! And we sing a song at the end 'Ding dong the wolf is gone'

An old favourite - we do this as part of our graduation ceremony every year.

A new book for me & the class this year - a lovely tale & beautifully illustrated - and of course I'm not biased just because it is written by an Irish man.

One of the most gorgeous books ever, we had such fun looking for Bog Babies in the forest!

One that children 'get' immediately.

What can I say - I love this one, never mind the children!

Another old classic - a different twist on the tradtional story.

A great one at the start of the school year to get children involved in story time - they can join in this one so easily - we also do this as part of our Graduation ceremony.

This one is up here to introduce the brilliant Nick Sharratt to readers, he has re-written all the classic tales in a brilliant rhyming style. I love all his books - the sillier he better!

I have so many others that I could I believe do a top 100 & maybe that is another post for a later date.

Outdoor Play link-up - guest post from Down Under.

Well here we are, bloggers from opposite sides of the globe coming together to share our early childhood experiences. While Kierna takes a 8 week summer vacation, down here in Australia, I’m rugging up at home on a 2 week winter term break. So, perhaps at this point I should introduce myself.  I am Karen, and I blog about my experiences in the early childhood field at Flights of Whimsy  I have known Kierna for over a year now through social media and several early childhood blogger networks. Kierna is passionate about her vocation and I have tremendous respect for the wonderful work she does with her nursery class at Windmill Integrated Primary School.  I am also a big fan of her blog and visit frequently for updates on the early learning journey of the children within her care.  So what a surprise, and such an honour to be asked by Kierna to do a guest post on her Learning for Life site. Wow... and Thank-you!

Actually it's me who should be saying Thank-you , to Karen, an inspirational blogger & someone I now consider a colleague & friend.

SHADOW PLAY

We have a beautiful large natural playground at our preschool and the arrival of every season brings different sensory delights and changes to the environments ambience. Partially surrounding our preschool building, we have a large covered concrete pathway which is totally shaded through the summer months.  But, as time moves on, and temperatures gradually decrease, the sun progressively descends lower and lower in the sky and its light advances further and further in under the pergola.

Recently, on a particularly glorious sunny winter day, I noticed Jack jiggling about and observing his shadow as it danced about on the concrete below his feet.  I joined in with his game by attempting to jump onto his shadow. A chasing game then followed whereby I was madly running about trying to catch his shadow as he giggled whole-heartedly. 

Eventually this became exhausting (for me!) and I suggested to him that perhaps we could trace around his shadow.  At first he was a little unsure about my meaning, but quickly caught on, standing as still as a statue while I began to trace.  Pretty soon we had an audience gathering, all marvelling at the idea and keen to have a try themselves.
As the children drew we began to discuss the nature of shadows.  We talked about how shadows occur when light is blocked by an object, in this case, our bodies. 

We practiced making our shadows taller by stretching up, and smaller by crouching down. We made funny shaped shadows by twisting and contorting our bodies.

We turned two shadows into one by hugging our bodies tight, and we gave them four arms, four legs and two heads!

After lunch, we came out and discovered that our shadows no longer fitted into our pavement sketches! They had moved, and grown taller! What a surprise!  A few children pondered on this interesting observation for quite some time and were clearly grappling with the question, ‘Why is it so?’  Others lost interest and moved on. The small group that remained were all at different levels of understanding, but a couple of children were eventually able to recognize the correlation between the suns movement through the sky and the changes they observed in their shadows in response to this movement. Jack, was one of them.

Now that is emergent curriculum! In allowing children ownership of their own learning, we can trust that they will take us down paths that we may have never imagined at the commencement of the day. Just wonderful!

 

To follow up on this interest, the following provocations could be provided:

·         A ‘search for shadows’ game

·         Exploration of shadows with an OHP or projector

·         A box shadow theatre project

·         Introduce the children to Indonesian shadow puppets

·         Build a sundial project

It is getting harder & harder to choose one post from them all each week, but given that it was International Mud Day last week I thought that the one from Having Fun At Chelle's House on building a mud pit from scratch with the help of 2 small children was appropriate. I hope her children come to appreciate this great play space over time & know from my own experience that even the most reluctant children can't resist the allure of mud after a while.

How did your kids play outdoors this week?

• Any kind of children's outdoor play-related posts are welcome!

We'd appreciate it if you included a link back to this post (either in your post or sidebar) to help us spread the word about the importance (and fun!) of outdoor play! In return, we'll gladly further share your post on Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest. Please feel free to grab the Outdoor Play Party button from the sidebar and/or include a text link back.






Please note that by contributing you are giving permission for an image and link to your post to be republished if featured. (If you have been featured, please feel free to grab the 'featured' button from the sidebar.) Share your ideas for outdoor play activities with us every other week! The linky goes live every second Friday at 12:01 GMT+1.  

Watching the clouds go by.

I don't think this picture needs much saying about it - I think I have the best job ever when I can actually get the time & chance to lie on the ground watching trees or clouds!

Guest post - The Great shed roll to create a tea house.

One of the first blogs I came across was Takoma Park Cooperative Nursery School's. I have enjoyed following this wonderful blog & watching their outdoor play space develop & change. I am so delighted to have Lesley Romanoff Director at TPCNS write a guest post this week for my blog. This is a post about how the 'can do' spirit of cooperative schooling shines through. It is thanks to Lesley that I introduced parent volunteers to my classroom this year. So sit back & read this post & enjoy the video of the shed roll.

The finished tea room

Our playground’s story is a chapter book. The first chapter doesn’t even take place at our current location. That chapter takes place at our much-loved location and is filled with more examples of the forward-thinking nature of our parent community. They renovated the playground there; specifically researching and purchasing only play structures that could be moved. Before long, that is exactly what happened. We found out exactly how much a flat bed could hold and how deep to dig to plant a slide, a seesaw, etc.

When we landed at our new site, our primary focus was the interior spaces. The bungalow had not been used as a residence for years. In the late 80s and 90s, it was a daycare. We gutted it for its current iteration for our parent cooperative school. And when I say “we,” I mean, parents and staff. We only hired a handful of professionals and the rest was dogged determination and elbow grease, or rather spackle.

We brought the playground up to speed and settled in knowing that the playground would be the next thing we would tackle. A student’s grandfather worked with me to develop a plan for the playground. It involved destinations and pathways as well as height and texture in the form of key plantings. Then Phase 1, or the next chapter was written. The sandpit, the campsite, the tubes (purchased for the old school, but not installed), and the seesaw were installed or rearranged. The dirt was moved from the new sandpit to create a berm and these are two of the best features of the playground.

The dust cleared and settled, but there was one destination/component from the playground plan left to be created and it was a playhouse. We couldn’t really figure out where it would go once everything was “planted.” So this chapter begins with two moments in time.

The first moment, a parent asked me why our storage shed wasn’t painted like the school (we are keen on the bright and saturated colors). I didn’t have a real answer. The only thing I could come up with is that I just didn’t acknowledge the shed’s existence. In fact when I went through the hundreds of photos we have of our outdoor space I couldn’t find a reasonable photo of the shed or a view that included the place that would become the Children’s Teahouse and Rock Garden.

The second moment came soon after on a brutal hot day during our summer art camp. I was sitting on one of the sandpit’s boulders (you get to do this with mixed-age classes) while looking at the Montessori Services catalog. I looked up at the shed (grump) and then wondered about a rock garden and how to heave ho the shed to create a playhouse, without actually losing the shed.

And there you have it. Well, except for the HOURS of labor moving the shed to the back of the yard (here is the video and HOURS of fundraising and HOURS of digging, building, and moving rocks! Those hours will be traded, joyfully, for HOURS of play, imagination, and collaboration. As always, this beauty was pulled off with the help of the parents and the children. The parents are modeling community involvement and the children adopt it in a very real way. 

Stay tuned as we create our next playground feature takes shape…a dry creek bed!

The children breaking the ground for the dry creek bed project

Outdoor Play Link up - Take time to just be!

We have heard people say that times flies, especially as you get older & I think once you have children at school or are a teacher then the year seems to go by even quicker!
I have now been teaching in the same school for 10 years & have seen the bumps become babies & the babies become my pupils and now those bumps are getting ready to leave primary school.
If I have any advice for parents and educators of young children it's to slow down & enjoy this precious time before it's too late. Celebrate all the achievements even if your heart is in your mouth as they climb or bring your a creepy crawly!

Go for a walk & joy seeing the world through the eyes of a child, just amble along with no set agenda except to maybe feed the ducks.

I am a natural optimist but also believe that you can't possibly spend any time around a 3 or 4 year old child and not become infected with their zest for life.

I had so many favourites in this link up party but if I have to choose one it's from Lyndsay over at Our Feminist Playschool. I just love that her little boy had the opportunity to get into the mud & really experience it.

How did your kids play outdoors this week?

Share your ideas for outdoor play activities with us every other week! The linky goes live every second Friday at 12:01 GMT+1. Here are just a few guidelines for sharing:

• Any kind of children's outdoor play-related posts are welcome!
• 
  If you'd like us to further share your post (e.g., on Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest), please just include a link back to this post (either in your post or sidebar) to help us spread the word about the importance (and fun!) of outdoor play! Each time we will feature an activity from the previous party. By contributing you are giving permission for an image and link to your post to be republished. (If you have been featured, please feel free to grab the 'featured' button from the sidebar.)
•  Please feel free to grab the Outdoor Play Party button from the sidebar and/or include a text link back.