International Mud Day - Filosofiska Förskola/Preschool

Giant from Euro Academy checking out the sweet smelling flowers ... he has been on a round the world trip visiting Australia before us. Allwoing the preschoolers in Australia, USA and Sweden to get to know a little more about each other. Svea the moose started her trip with the children at Euro Academy - now she is with Melanie and her children in Australia - and soon they will all be returning home to tell their adventures...

the set up - before the children came out. We had the mud-play right on the square -  passers by stopped to look and ask what was going on - and were reminded of their days as children playing with mud.

Our sign for International Mud Day - a separate post will be coming if you are interested in finding out how we made this... 

a turned over fruitbox with 2 black circles painted on was just right for a mud kitchen on the move...

water water water - mud play for these 1-3 year olds was VERY much about the water...

some children were not at all interested in mud play - but water play really interested them. There was a continuous queue for water top ups...

in the beginning most children were rather careful, using spoons to touch the mud - but after a while they got into the  rhythm of using their hands... that it was OK to get messy...

PLENTY of transferring mud from one container to another - and it was quite clear that some children had a very clear plan of what they were doing...

pouring pouring, back and forth

filling

testing

and there was lots of cooking...

picking up mud with tongs was quite the challenge

mixing to just the right consistency

sharing recipes...

collecting equipment - to ensure the perfect mud-pie outcome...

making mud chocolate balls

with plenty of sprinkles - (coloured rice and lentils)

they almost look good enough to eat

rolling in the "sprinkle mix"

using a chocolate box to create patterns - perfect for little hands to squish...

anyone for eggs?

or a plateful of soup?

why not climb in? But no-one was prepared to go in bare-foot this time...

adding flowers to the recipe

the stove top was also great to practice jumping skills

and every once in a while there was an opportunity to explore by yourself while the others busied themselves with mud ball juggling, or water the flowers on the square, or chasing teachers with muddy hands with the biggest smiles on their faces....

learning at the light table

sometimes things just don't go as planned - next to the light table a put a whole load of boxes filled with a variety of sparkly and transparent items... and I challenged the children to create a pattern together... it was obviously too much of a challenge - as their whole focus was on possessing as many jewels as possible

talking with them just wasn't working - they were too busy ensuring no-one took from their pile to actually focus on my words - so I just started on creating a pattern of my own in the hope it would inspire...

it worked - one of the three children stopped focussing on hoarding and watched me - and then started on her own - what was interesting was that we destroyed my pattern to make room for hers... but she replicated it exactly

I started to take lots of photographs of the process, from different angles - the others stopped hoarding and started to watch

and then started creating patterns of their own... "Suzanne, Suzanne, come and take a photo of my flower..."

Over time

in late April we started visiting the "Snail Park" so called because of the number of snails we have found there... we have watched how over time it has become green and then even greener - and how the plants have grown

it was easy to find snails because there was not so much greenery

and then there was an explosion of colour and height - it was suddenly transformed into a jungle from one week to the next

the pathways became narrow, almost overgrown, and too courage to brave them...

we could find different colours here there and everywhere

and yet the remarkable thing is... that our ever changing jungle - our million discoveries, all our new adventures happen in this little green space between the underground station and the centre where Filosofiska Preschool lies. How amazing nature is, that over time can tell us new stories, share new plants, new bugs and inspire new games...

Looking forward to midsummer celebrations

 Midsummer will be celebrated all over Sweden this coming Friday (the Friday closest to the summer solstice) - here is a picture story of how my family celebrates - taken last summer... We are lucky as this happens in a small community where we have our forest house on the same land where my husband's parents live - there are meadows, there is the forest, there is the lake and there are enough people (when guests are invited) to make a great celebration... it really reminds me of something from Astrid Lindgren's Bullerby (Noisy Village)

the day starts with picking flowers to decorate the midsummer pole - but of course that is not the only thing that is picked

finding wild strawberries takes priority!

we make crowns of flowers - using both wild flowers and bought flowers

there is dancing around the midsummer pole - many different songs

and a lot of laughter

a detail of the midsummer pole - it is a pole with a bar across with two circles hanging from either side of the bar.

lots of opportunities to find insects and frogs and toads - and to show off finds (although not mixing frogs and insects...)

after the singing and cake eating it is time to play games - a series of challenges - this one for example - how many strikes to get the nail all the way in...?

can you stack the rocks to the specified height - one for children and one for adults - there was a piece os wood to help measure...

always fun when you totally challenge how high you can go and it eventually falls down...

counting how many blocks are inside the box

And of course there is midsummer food - sill (pickled herring and other flavoured herring and a whole variety of them, new potatoes, prawn mix and salmon mix... but salmon usually features somewhere...

playing in the water as the evening comes

taking it easy in the dipping sun with some food grilled at the water's edge

watching the sun dip, but not go down... it never gets truly dark - for 24 hour daylight you have to go further north than Stockholm