playing cinderella

On the way back from the park one of the children kept sweeping the ground with a bunch of leaves in her hands saying she liked to scrub the floor... several other children piped up that they too liked to scrub the floor... so I asked if they wanted to scrub the floor in the afternoon? I was met with a huge "yes" reply from all of them...

But this was no ordinary scrubbing of the floor... first I squirted paint onto the floor - yellow, red and white... the children peeled of their socks and trousers, tights and longer dresses - and were allowed to skate and mix up the paint on the floor... they had an amazing time skating around. They were warned about the slipperiness and that they would have to be careful how they painted with their feet...

After a while they each got a little scrubbing sponge to clean the floor with... this is where I took one or two photos at the beginning and then it was all hands on to make sure the activity remained safe...
the floor got VERY wet and VERY slippery.
Again the children were warned that there was a high risk that they might slip and fall... and I got that look of "yeah, right"... and three slips later the children had understood that I had been right... the floor did get slippery when it was wet...

The whole time they were wetting their sponges and "scrubbing" I was drying the floor to makes sure the area around the sinks did not get too slippery... I felt that the floor in the wide open area was an OK risk to fall on, but the area around the sinks had a higher risk that I was not prepared for the children to take... so yes, no more photos taken... I was on the floor on my hands and knees drying like crazy the floor area around the sink.

It is no easy thing to decide to do a risky play activity... my heart beats so much faster than normal, my need to see what everyone is doing is intensified and funnily enough I do think my ability to see everything improves in these situations as I am on high alert... I also know that these kind of activities can only happen for a short length of time when the children have a high focus of their own... so after a while I made the decision that all the children put their sponges in the sink for washing and start to dry the floor with me... which was equally fun...

As soon as the children started scrubbing the floor they announced that they were Cinderella... I guess that is the only place they will see someone scrubbing the floor this way, on their knees, these days...