Experience Brainstorms

My head has always been flooded with too many ideas, more than I can ever manage to implement on the floor with the children. This has been true since I started my Diploma of Children's Services 15 years ago.

I'd like to share them, in the hope that maybe others will try them out too.

Initiating spark: L. (3yrs) made the mental leap from balloons popping when they go outside to that they might potentially becoming rubbish that harms sea turtles. In doing this he pulled together information from our current conversation about keeping balloons inside, an interaction with his mum about needing to hold onto his birthday helium balloon so it wouldn't float away and land in the sea, and watching videos of sea turtles on his dad's phone. (A seriously impressive piece of mental gymnastics there for a barely 3 year old.)

Experience concept: Explore sea creatures and rock pools, extend by adding small plastic wrappers and ask what might happen.

EYLF: LO2.4, LO 4, LO 5.3: exploring the interconnectedness of all beings, building on our ideas of how our actions impact the environment close to us, and more distantly, using a variety of materials. This involves a lot of hypothesising of potential effects and interactions between the animals and the human impact.

Materials:  Individual dishes, clear plastic is good, about the size of a large cake pan. Water, rinsed sand (so the water doesn't get too murky), small plastic ocean animals, smooth rocks, shells, small plastic wrapper type rubbish (to add after children are developing story with the figures).

Questions to provoke thinking/extension:
How might rubbish get into the ocean?
Have you seen rubbish left at the beach?
What might happen to the animals swimming with the rubbish?
Do the animals like the rubbish?

Further Extension: walk to local waterway, look at what rubbish has ended up there. Bring tools for cleaning up?
Examine our own rubbish, ask about how families manage rubbish at home and how we can improve our practices at our centre.
Participate in Clean Up Australia Day, ask whether children might like to make posters to share their understanding with other people.

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.

Wisteria Whimsies

Today I took a moment to stop. This is a bit of a rarity for me as Outdoor Teacher. Usually I'm flitting about, mentally measuring how children are engaging, whether there's a quiet nudge I can make by bringing in additional resources, carefully improving the presentation of an experience, asking questions and making sure there is enough water for good quality play.

Today I took a moment to stop.

Our centre has a climbing tree. It's a beautiful tall gum tree with an ancient wisteria vine carefully twined around it. The lower parts of the vine are as thick as my thigh and make a perfect slope for little feet to shuffle up into the ever changing tangle of branches.

Over winter the branches are quietly bare, elegant arcs of woven sleeping life.

Right now, the whole mass is covered in pendulous pale purple flowers and their scent wafts across our yard with a spattering of blossoms with every breeze.

Today I took a moment to stop. The wisteria enticed me into it.
I hauled out a couple of mats and just lay down gazing up at the blossoms. The mere act of hauling out the mats was enough to attract some companions for my moment of peacefulness.

The flowers look completely different from underneath, a circle of pale blossoms with darker younger blooms in the centre. Snuggled beside three little people we just lay there, watching the bees, noting native and bumble bees. Then a breeze would breathe through and we'd be showered in falling blossoms.

I do love taking a moment to stop.
We're hoping to turn this tree into a Magic Faraway Tree, with little fairy houses hidden in the branches for secret gifts from our local fairies.

For now, I'll enjoy lying on the ground and gazing up at the branches with my charming young companions.

Meaningful Art: A Moment to Reminisce

Some years ago I ran art workshops for the toddlers and preschoolers of our centre. We worked through so many concept blocks, revelling in so many delicious artistic discoveries. I carefully collected up pieces from each block as we went, and at the end of the year we put them all up as a gallery exhibition for the setting of the centre AGM.

It was amazing.

One of the things I loved about the exhibition was that no two pieces were the same. Every series of explorations was open to the children's own expressive whims.

It began with what little remained of our Space Ship. Any parent or educator can understand the joy and potential offered by a cardboard box. This was a particularly huge box which we'd painted white, then decorated, then built our resources for: blaster rockets, space suits, control panels, even drawings of imagined aliens. The box was loved to death over 3 months after its creation. By the end of the year all we'd salvaged was a great many photos, our weekly documentation of the journey, several drawings and two astronaut 'backpacks'.

I love offering children authentic art materials. There's something about working on a real canvas with some thought-provoking inspiration that brings out the best in children's art.

For this series we had a few real canvases, a few squares of rubber backed calico stretched in an embroidery hoop, and a few squares of rubber backed calico stapled around a sheet of cardboard. Real art materials don't have to cost you a fortune, it's often just a matter of thinking a little sideways.

Our director had been gifted with a beautiful bunch of flowers in a wooden box-like pot for the first of my workshops, and she let me borrow it for the children. It takes a bit of practise to mix up the approximate right colours, but I really recommend making the effort (the value of this will become apparent in one of the following series). 

 

For an emphasis on process more than product: a mirror with a collection of treasures (with a collection of our play with chromatography).

 

This one was one of my favourite workshops. I began by reading 'Where the Wild Things Are'.

This is where we see the potential of having paint mixed to the right colours. I mixed the paint to the colours Maurice Sendak used in his illustrations. I also want to show the joy of 'monsters' as an inspirational material: There. Is. No. Wrong. I had the children sketch out their monster first, then gave them the selection of colours to work in. It was also important that they work at an upright easel, standing up to draw. Hopefully I'll get the chance to go into this in more depth in another post, but this really opens up the creative potential of the artist.

One of my favourite elements from this was a moment of 'happy accident'. A happy accident in art is where you make an unexpected and often dramatic mistake, and looking at the results inspires you to something new. In this workshop a child made their own happy accident with a drip of paint, which became a yoyo string for his monster. 

Every monster had a story and I made a deliberate effort to record those stories.

“Mine's a scary monster. It's got a black yo-yo with a line going to it.”

“Hey look, he's holding a string. I drew a line going down. Mine has a funny tail.”

“Mine's a spotty monster and it's got stripes, zebra stripes. And look at its mouth! It's got scary gnashing hands.”

“This is a basket full of yummy food that my monster likes to eat. This monster eats rabbits and cats and sticks and bananas.”

The next week we made monster masks. Very few of those survived but we managed to include a few in the exhibition, and we made a few extras for children to explore whilst viewing their exhibition. 

The next series for the exhibition explored scale and transparency.

I love overhead projectors. Completely love them. And so do the children.

We explored shadows, scale, and how the ohp flipped images. The children found it hilarious that their hand shadow was ginormous in comparison to my hand on the wall.

We drew on ohp transparencies, projected our images up on the wall, flipped them and played with them, then painted them on this new huge scale.

 

For the exhibition I recreated some of these adventures for children to revisit with their parents.

In our block on textiles we made flour dough 'resist' for doing our own batik painting. It was hard work, but we produced something beautiful over a few workshops. We also arranged our own patterns of fabric pieces inside embroidery hoops for a beautiful hanging element.

Sadly I can't share many of the photos from these workshops as they show children's faces. I sincerely wish I could so you could see their intense focus, the thought, the intention they put into their creative works.

This shot show the children's own photography:

Many of the parents were surprised when I pointed out that the children had taken those photos.

And the children loved their exhibition:

So did the parents. We had an amazing turnout for the AGM too.

My time can be a little crazy, so these blog entries are highly irregular, but I do have a few thoughts bubbling around at the moment that I'm interested in sharing over time.

 

 

Kitchen Commotion

So something utterly fabulous happened today and I just had to share it straight away.

Noticing this image on Let The Children Play, taken from Child's Play Music (not 100% sure if that's the right link) inspired a spark of an idea

We've been getting quite a few thunderstorms lately, and some of the children have been scared by the big rumbles booming around the centre in the late afternoon. So I got to thinking; what better way to become comfortable with the exciting sounds of thunder, than to make our own noisy wet thundery booms?

We had a metal water trough which had been used maybe twice in the first few months of me starting at this centre (about 7 years ago now) and I hadn't seen it since. Oh joyous cacophany! Metal trough + metal kitchen utensils + pots and pans. A few children got experimental and tested pouring water down the slide. To give them a better outlet I pulled out some old plastic water-course pieces and leaned them against an A-frame for pouring water down a slope into another trough.

Science!! And the perfect lead in to building our own water wall (which I've very much been enjoying collecting resources for).

All the joyous noise making last week initiated some child-led spontaneous music sessions, jamming away on upturned saucepans.

Which led to today.

Today I installed our Kitchen Commotion. I liked 'Kitchen Cacophony' but Commotion was more popular with the children.

Here in Canberra there's a govt. supported business called Tiny Tim's Shed (or something like that, it used to be Revolve) set up at the tip, where you can pick up useful stuff that other people were throwing away for next to nothing. Perfect opportunity for re-stocking our outdoor play resources. I was able to top up our ever disappearing stock of ladles and scoops, and lucked upon some really interesting objects and a back-board for our upcoming water wall.

Speaking tube, just taped on for now.

This set up was amazingly simple. Pots and pans wired to the fort's rails. Some electrical tape to cover the sharp ends of the wire, and a delicious copper basin to store utensils. The children helped me scrub down the utensils before we hung them from the fort.
De-rail: I've been enjoying pushing myself to ask "Is there any good reason why the children can't help me with this task?" It's a great way to keep the children as involved as possible in what I'm doing for them; if we do it together, they'll enjoy the whole process and hopefully care more about the resulting awesome.

We've been getting a lot of rain so the children desperately needed to let off some steam. What better way to unleash all those restrained fidgets than with an unlimited-volume Kitchen Commotion music session? I wish I could share some action shots with you, I'll have to swipe one of my daughters playing

One other addition I love? Our speaking tubes. My resident Mad Scientist came up with these, crafted from random irrigation pipes and the hose from an old dishwasher.

I just love this speaking tube, it has so much personality. Like it's just begging for 2 pom poms with googly eyes, only I know they wouldn't last more than a few minutes.

Now I only wish I knew where we might go next week...

Throwing in a link to 'It's Playtime' from Let the Children Play to share my bit of fun:

Go check out It's Playtime for more wild fun ideas for adventuring with little people.
(pretty sure I've muddled up the button but hopefully it'll get you close to the right place, I'm still new at this)

Language of Learning

In recent years I've made a point of challenging the language I use in my formal observations and interpretations to emphasise the depth and value of children's play.

When my firstborn was in NICU, having been born ridiculously early (27+4 weeks gestation some 4.5 years ago now) we were achingly limited in how much we could actually participate in her care. All bar two of the nurses were incredible; sensitive, positive, excited to share every little milestone with us.

One nurse I didn't like fussed around like a mother hen, dismissing my competence in doing my child's cares (changing her nappy, wiping her face, switching her sats monitor to the other foot, really challenging stuff *note sarcasm*). The other that infuriated me had little quirks of language that devalued my time with my daughter. In the early weeks I would be lucky to cuddle my daughter once every 3-6 days. Whilst setting up for one of these fleeting precious snuggly moments, this nurse would refer to them as our "little cuddles". Little. Little? How is something so immensely significant in my starved relationship with my newborn prem 'little'? How could something I'd been desperately craving for 4 or more days be 'little'?

 

Whilst my daughter was petite, there was nothing 'little' about the emotional realm of these touches.

The language we use is significant.

When the babies in my care are exploring water, they're discovering Fluid Dynamics, gravity, conservation of mass.
When they're exploring the wheat packs and chilled river stones in the sensory trough they're experimenting with Thermal Dynamics, and classification, scientific observation.
As they examine photos of themselves, their families, their peers, the staff, the peoples of the world; they're studying Anthropology.

If I can use the formal scientific terms for the concepts these children are exploring, I value their learning as equal to that of a university professor.

To them, their discoveries are no 'little' easily dismissed thing. Their learning and discovery is as vital as breathing, and crammed full of wonderment to boot.