Summer Recap part 2

In my last post I covered some of the changes I had made to our outdoor play area. I mentioned that I had built a new roof over the little house in the corner of the yard and that moving the bus benches here made this a favourite sit spot all summer. However, I did not have a picture to include in my last post – but I do now;

I also promised to write more about some of our summer activities so that is what this post is for. Although International Mud Day occurs before my summer vacation, I never write about it until after. I didn’t write a dedicated ‘Mud Day 2022’ post but I can’t have a summer activities post without at least a couple mud day photos. This particular group was highly motivated to wash muddy toys so much of the activity was ‘mud on, mud off, repeat’.

The building area of the yard was popular all summer – surprisingly more popular than the water area or the climbing wall. Often, we had all eight of the children wanting to play here at the same time though they still preferred to create separate small ‘homes’ in a ‘town’ rather than work together on a single, large structure like other groups have in the past.

The gravel/digging area, of course, was always popular though usually only for smaller groups at one time. It was interesting to note that, no matter what the activity was, these two were always choosing to play together. The oldest and the youngest in the group – nine years difference in age – but they played so well together all summer. Observing friendships like this is one of the things I like best about having a mixed age group.

We also started a collection of ‘nature stuff’ to use to make mandalas. Some of the children only liked the ‘collecting’ part, others preferred simply sorting the items that were collected on our walks. Only a few actually seemed to enjoy creating the mandalas though.

As usual, we went to parks almost every day to play tag or other group activities that require a big open space that we can’t do in my yard. I almost never take the children to playstructures but we do love the climbers they have at St John’s Park.

Whenever the basketball court was empty, the children always wanted to play line tag.

Some of the children tried cutting tree cookies. Even though we only used small branches this was a surprisingly difficult/time consuming activity. The children who were persistent enough to cut all the way through were very proud of their achievement – so was I 🙂

Fantastic Summer!

Castle Blocks

A few years ago I bought some sets of Castle Blocks from Quality Classrooms. Like all the various types of blocks I have they are rotated in and out of our play space depending on the interests of the children in my care.

My current group of children has enjoyed building with these blocks for several weeks now.  They particularly like to design and build impressive towers.

I enjoy watching the cooperation when the children agree to work together on a building project;

However, they have encountered a bit of a problem – the baby of the group gets so excited when he sees a tower that he can’t resist knocking it down.  He does immediately attempt to help rebuild the towers but the original builders are still very disappointed by the destruction.

One of the solutions that the children have come up with is to only build towers when the baby is not in the room.  Although effective, this strategy also severely limits the block building time.  Then one day, while the baby was playing in the room, I observed the three-year-old building this;

I asked him to tell me about his creation.  He said “It’s a tower – that the baby can’t knock down.”  Hmmm, very interesting.  These horizontal towers have become quite popular and can be built all day long without any issues.

Nice problem solving 🙂

 

Liking the Space

It seems like I’ve been neglecting my blog.  Truth is, I’m feeling a little overextended at the moment.  Meetings, editing, writing presentations, paperwork, and other commitments have been eating up all my ‘spare’ time.

The 11 hours/day that I spend with the children has become my ‘quiet’ time.  Right now I’m supposed to be working on a slideshow presentation that I need to finish for tomorrow so I really shouldn’t be ‘wasting’ time playing around here but….

I wanted to share some of our experiences as we try out our newly renovated spaces.  There have been (mostly) positives and (a few) negatives from my perspective and the children’s too.

I haven’t really got the time to do this now so I’m just going to post a few pictures for now.  Here is a ‘magic’ tower;

The blanket was successfully removed and replaced several times without knocking over the impressive structure hidden under it;

In the nature area there has been a lot of interest in our new tree pieces – we now have several different sizes to choose from.  Here are some of the smaller ones that were being used to make a fence;

The new art spaces have been popular too – for the preschoolers;

And the school-age children too;

Even the cats have been checking out the new spaces.  Malta has decided that the nap area divider is her property;

However, there have been a few disputes about that.  Both cats have also claimed that the carpet under my computer chair belongs to them;

I continually have to decide whether the paperwork is more important than disturbing the cats.  Maybe it is their way of telling me to go outside and play instead 🙂

Hopefully I’ll have time to write a ‘real’ post after things slow down a little.  Until then, I’ve got more work to do….

Rona Parts

Prior to my vacation I had made several trips to various stores to see the selection of bathroom fixtures for my planned renovation.  On one trip to Rona I noticed a display of ‘firewood’ by the exit.

I don’t know why anyone would want to burn such lovely pieces of wood.  I bought three packages to add to the loose parts area in the yard.  There was only one day left before my vacation so the children had little time to experiment with the new supplies but one child did make a ‘snowflake’;

Yesterday – first day back after vacation – there was a lot more excitement about the new loose parts – so many to choose from;

Foundations to build;

Creative design elements;

and even an interesting literacy component;

I can’t wait to see what they come up with today.