Birthday Parties: Cheap and Simple: Explorers

My Affectionate-Bulldozer of a youngest daughter had what was deemed 'the best birthday ever' near the end of 2013. It was her Explorer Party for her 4th birthday.

I'll admit that it wasn't her choice of party, but it was chosen based on what she loves. And it was simple, and affordable, and fantastically fun.

We're not a family of great financial means. But we are a wealthy family in terms of creative thought and enterprising use of available resources.

The basics of our Best Birthday Party Ever was that we met out at a favoured area of local bushland, gave each child a very basic, open ended 'explorer kit', and set them loose allowing the children to lead us according to what interested them, finishing with a picnic lunch.

The explorer kits were basic drawstring bags made from scrap fabric I had on hand, each with a length of ribbon to hang over the child's neck (many of which are still being used by the children 12 months on).
Each kit contained:
* a cheap set of play binoculars
* a notepad
* two coloured markers
* two chocolates
Party blowers may have come out during the picnic lunch.

That was it. That was all it took to turn children into brave explorers with independent purpose and to realise the spirit of their own adventurous potential. We had a couple of magnifying glasses too.

No prescriptive games requiring rules or complicated resources.
No litter
No decorations
No pre-booking
No deposit of funds equal to our weekly groceries
No strenuous preparation of perfect delicate little details to become the envy of everyone on pinterest.

I subscribe to the concept of only inviting about as many children as the age my child is turning. Any more than that is overwhelming when they're little. Though the first birthday is all about the mama so invite whoever you want :)

I minimise organised party games. Children only really start enjoying party games from about 5-6 years. And I'm not a fan of needing winners and losers at birthday parties. Children get a lot more fun out of playing according to their own whim. When we control their play we miss the opportunity to see what amazing joy they can create for themselves.

In our adventures we tested out our binoculars, we looked at small things up close with our magnifying glasses. We studied kangaroo poo, and discovered sun-bleached dry animal bones that fitted in against each other. We found a dry tortoise shell and saw the bone structure within. We followed wallaby tracks. We found frog spawn clinging to bullrushes. We touched velvety soft fungus growing in a tree stump. We peered into hollow logs and guessed at what might live there.

 We drew our ideas in our mini adventure journals. We shared our discoveries verbally and by handing treasures from friend to friend. We marvelled at our world and were surrounded by some remarkable scenery and perfect Australian skies.

We played hide and seek around big fallen logs. We poked waterholes with sticks. We climbed and ran and balanced and slid around on an old wooden sheep run by an old shearing shed.

We had good quality simple fun. No bells and whistles. No fancy expensive play centre. Just children, a wild space, and Adventure.

We keep our cakes simple too: a map on a chocolate brownie

Letting it go

A lot has happened. I've moved on from my centre of 9.5 years. I ran out of respect for our director for a multitude of reasons. This isn't the place for those reasons.

What I want to share is a moment from yesterday. I've been doing casual work to try out different centres, and I love one I'm at a lot, they're beautifully managed and have a solid philosophy of real play for children.

Yesterday I had to let it go. Let go of the control and hand it back to the children.
I was with the 2-3-ish year olds.
In the morning we noticed a rabbit out in the yard, which we watched through the window. Then we noticed that one of them was in our veggie patch. The veggie patch is 'fenced' with found sticks poked into the ground upright to deter the rabbits. So we trekked out there to shoo the rabbit away and stop it eating our capsicum.

In the afternoon one of the 3 year olds turned to me and said, "We need to make a scarecrow to keep the rabbits away from our veggies."
2-3 year olds aren't great at planning out their visions. And that's ok, it's a learned skill. The UV was still too high to be out in the sun, so we scrawled out on paper what we thought our scarecrows should look like. The scarecrows were lucky if they had facial features somewhere approximating their torsos, but that's figurative drawing with 2-3 year olds.

I asked what we should make our scarecrows out of. "Sticks!" was the enthusiastic reply.
What should we make the head from? "Sticks!"
What shape should the head be? "Square!" "Round!"... with a quick vote from those present we had a balance, so our scarecrow may end up having two heads for one of each.

How are we going to join the sticks together? ...... "Stickytape?" "Glue?" They weren't quite sure on this one.
And here was the point where I knew I had to let it go.
So I got stickytape and glue, they traipsed off enthusiastically to collect the tiny twigs they could find. And a small group spent 20-40 minutes carefully painting their sticks with glue and wrapping them with stickytape.

There didn't have to be a structure for them to see it as a scarecrow. There didn't have to be engineering or planned intention or a recognisable form.
What mattered was that it was theirs, that they could enjoy the sticky materials and puzzle out how to stick it down without getting stuck on themselves.

Of course I have ideas for how to put our scarecrows together, and we can get to those later, in stages, following the children's whims. But yesterday, it just felt so good to let it go and be happy with gluey taped up sticks, just as my beloved toddlers were.