Outdoor surfaces

During my stay in Boulder I was fortunate to not only attend Boulder Journey School but also to be personally guided around The Wilderness Center/The Acorn School (take the time to check out their website here) - and I have gathered so much inspiration from the places and the people involved that it is going to have to be a whole series of posts with lots of different themes...

This first one is about the surfaces used in the outdoor play-spaces...

Its so important to think of the surface - not just from a safety point of view, but also a aesthetic and sensory view. I found myself taking photographs of the ground at The Wilderness Center/Acorn School and continued to do this at Boulder Journey School (take the time to check out their website here)...

In fact I found myself taking photos of ceiling decorations, lighting as well as activities, documentation, art inspiration etc etc - and that doesn't even include all the ideas I got by listening to others...

Anyway ... I can feel you are waiting for photos - so here are the first batch... in no particular order...
(BJS - Boulder Journey School..... WC/AS - Wilderness Center/Acorn School) - I have considerably more images of BJS dues to the fact I was there for 2 days and able to visit and revisit and take more photos based on the reflections I had made... I would LOVE to go back to the Wilderness Center/ Acorn School just so that I could take more photos and notice more details... as being able to go round several times each day really did offer a marvelous opportunity to reflect on what you saw, revisit and see new details that a first visit cannot...

gravel surface (BJS)

option for mud, large flagstones (BJS)

sandy gravel - perfect for mixing up with the water play - using an old slide... (BJS)

earth rocks and pine cones (BJS)

dividing the grass with a dry river bed (there is water possibility here too) (BJS)

sand - slide direct from classroom for toddlers (BJS)

wood chippings, stones and wood/tree cookies (over view coming later) (BJS)

gravel and wood-chippings(BJS)

over-view of the surface variations (BJS) - think barefoot and the possible sensory stimulation there...

wood chippings and boulders (BJS)

decking (different levels) (BJS)

light wood chippings (BJS)

covered decking and grass (BJS)

flagstones and tree cookies (WC/AS)

tree cookies (WC/AC)

decking and wood chippings (WC/AS)

wood decking, wood chippings, stone and tree decorations

tree trunks, stone edge marker and mud (hot hot summer) (WC/AS)

slightly raised grassy area has lost its grass over time, but this is how the children prefer it. The small hill gives more play opportunities, experimenting as well as supporting gross motor skill development

stone bordered by wood and wood chippings (BJS)

There will be more beautiful and inspiring photos coming from both preschools during the whole of July!

Gone to Boulder....

Dear All,

So I am REALLY excited... off on my first adventure ALONE since meeting my husband.

I am excited and nervous at the same time.

Looking forward to learning lots and being inspired... but it's going to be strange to be so far from my children... to be so so far away... but I am always talking about risky play... this is risky play for me... going to a summer conference at Boulder Journey School when I know no-one else who is going - talk about being outside my comfort zone!

So no posts for the coming week... but I will be collecting lots of ideas, and photos to share when I am back...

love play and happiness!

Suzanne

Tinkering - part one......

This was a first for my husband and I to give the time and the trust to our children to use real tools with VERY little supervision ... yes they have had access to them before, and yes they have been allowed to be creative before... but this was a serious attempt to take another step back...

Was it easy?

Absolutely not!

Of course John and I have lots of experience (John has much more than me when it comes to woodwork) and sharing experience comes naturally to both of us... but this time we were only to share if we were asked, and then to try and phrase everything in questions so that our children had the opportunity to work it out for themselves...

John and I laughed at each other a great deal - holding our hands behind our backs, starting sentences and catching ourselves in time... or discovering one of us has started to share ideas... its a learning process for us too . For me, using wood, I am learning as much as the children - I never got to do woodwork as a child - I went to an all girls school and it just wasn't offered (it did go co-ed in my last 2 years of secondary school but by then I had already selected my o-levels (yes that is how old I am - one of the last to do o-levels - and they have nothing to do with owls!!!!) - so I never got to use the newly constructed wood and metalwork studios)...
anyway back to the story...
yes I am learning just as much as the children, but over the years I have learned other things which let's me apply knowledge to the wood - and even though I was itching to test it out - I made the effort to take a back step and let the children test out their ideas... not easy at all when you can see them making mistakes... but John and I had decided, as long as it was not going to seriously injure or damage the equipment then we were going to let them make their own mistakes... as I said easier said then done.

Three children also means conflicts... they were not always united on the plan, who was using what tool when and what was the best method and why... the aim was to build a bug hotel...
but we let them try and work the conflicts out themselves too - all part of the tinkering process...

When conflicts got into a negative spiral I suggested that Michael should come and see if he could find some pine cones to fill the bug hotel rooms with... this gave him not only the chance to cool down, to collect his thoughts, to feel useful - but also time to reflect on what he wanted to do and how he could achieve that - so that when we got back he was ready to be an active and creative part of the process again...

The day was hot so we tinkered for an hour or so before the call of the lake was too loud... the tinkering is now on hold... next week I will be in Boulder, Colorado, the girls will be with my in-laws visiting a zoo here in Sweden and John and Michael are off to Denmark to visit the new BIG aquarium in Copenhagen... a first time we are all in different places!

I am hoping that they will have a little tinker when I am gone, as I will be gone for a week while they are just away for 2 nights... if not we will resume when I get back...

at first all three were content just fiddling with the tools a little

getting the feel of things

then they got down to business...

cone collections were inspected and there was great joy at the sheer volume of small  small mini-bugs already living in them... the bug hotel was sure to be a success.

learning to use the drill

and what happens if the drill is not long enough...

a chance to work on parallel projects

and work together as a team...

missing heart beats

Sometimes I watch children, and honestly I am terrified - I see the child hurtling down the slide with virtually no body control whatsoever, the child is laughing and smiling, so I stand and watch close by, my heart beating a million miles an hour... the worst that can happen is she lands with a bang and she cries... but all the same its an unnatural feeling to see a child hurtling towards potential hurt.
She literally flies off the end of the slide and lands with a thud...
I stand poised... I let her make the decision between "is this pain" or "is this fun". She looks at me ... I look at her... she laughs stands up and goes back up the slide. I let out a sigh in secret.
She flew off that slide somewhere between 5 and 10 times - and each time my heart raced, maybe a little less each time, but all the same - I could feel those bumps even if she didn't care about them ... I knew my body just would not be able to cope with that sort of play and manage to enjoy the evening - heck it would probably take me a whole week to recover.

Her last few slides were more controlled and there was no flying off the end...

This last weekend we went to a park on the other side of town (in fact the VERY park where I probably had a few heart attacks when my twins were 15 month old and decided to explore the play equipment by the divide and conquer approach... I simply could not be in two places at the same time... and had to resign myself that there were going to be a lots of bumps, bruises and concussions - they did become excellent climbers very fast though) - anyway back to the weekend...
It was interesting to see how Michael "controlled" his decent so that he could lose control and speed down and bump all over the place (It impressed one dad of a 2 year old enough to give it a go himself - and the terror on his face was enough to let me know that it felt scarier than it looked). Michael, though, did this over and over again - going down the slide in all sorts of different positions, but coming back to tucking his feet close to his bum for maximum speed and loss of control on the middle bump! He had no idea how he was going to land really...

So it seems that children in the beginning have no control and just slide and laugh; then they learn to gain control and slide and laugh; and then they challenge everything and see how they can "lose control" again... and slide and laugh...

and still my poor heart skips a beat every time... but I stay put, I let them make their own sliding story, I don't want to be the big bad wolf and blow out their adventure ... but if the risk is TOO big then of course I am going to have to huff and puff...

I want to give the children the gift of risk-assessment - and that is not something I can give them if I wrap them in cottonwool. AND I believe that it's better to start learning about risk assessment when you are young and the risks you take are probably going to be smaller - if you do not have a good risk assessment later in life I assume the accident will be bigger...

Summer Spaghetti painting part two!

time to add some colours to the spaghetti painting - the children had remembered seeing red and yellow flowers outside - so those were the colours made available...

as before the most interest was in experiencing the spaghetti - lifting it up and letting it fall, squishing, stretching

over and over again

dipping the spaghetti in the paint and allowing it to dance across the paper was NOT today's story. The song the children were singing was sensory and experimental - testing the properties of the spaghetti. Making marks was not important.

the summer spaghetti painting.
I am now thinking along the lines of continuing this painting in autumn and using autumnal colours to continue the next layers... and then when winter comes to top it with winter colours - and if the paper can cope then spring colours on top of that...  each time a photo of the process placed next to it so the children can see how the seasons change through the year by the different colours selected by their outdoor observations...

Children documenting

Michael filming the fishes... it was so funny as the fish really followed you when walking near the tank. Notice the huge smile on his face!

filming the reptiles - this is his own camera... he makes his own films using this including stop motion films... although we are moving over the the i-pad for stop motion films as there is an app to make life easier...

It is so interesting to see what he chooses to document and the amount of time he spends documenting the animals...
as part of the process he has got to go through his films and photos and select which ones we are downloading on to the computer. At first he wanted to keep all of them, but when I explained about how much space they took and that really we only have the space to save his favourite ones he understood he had to be selective. He managed to cut 130 films and photos to just 18 (pretty impressive I thought)

Michael also likes to document his drawings and his buildings... here he has drawn  his own nintendo DS to pretend play with...  and now he has got blogging to document his construction and play... Michael's Construction Site

Isabelle and Sophia - his big sisters - started blogging the day before... a way to document their feelings about how the planet is treated... Twin Love of the Planet is their blog... It will be interesting to see how often they all blog... and also how they reflect on what they have posted. Michael has already read his own blog several times... he has also reflected upon how he is going to take photographs in the future... there is a lot of learning going on...

Happy for no reason

“A child can teach an adult three things: to be

 happy for no reason, to always be busy with

 something, and to know how to demand with

 all his might that which he desires.”

― Paulo Coelho

I have seen this quote attached to various photographs - and the more I see this quote the more I think its just plain wrong... or at least part of it...

I feel children are happy for a reason... its just that adults fail to see that reason, or fail to place any importance on that reason so think there is no reason. This makes me upset. Why is so little value placed on children's reasons to be happy that they are considered happy for no reason?

And these days and ages - how many times do children come to adults asking to be entertained...? Have we then robbed children of their ability to always be busy with something by making them too dependent on us?
Paulo Coelho tweeted four hours ago "Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience" -  then, this is what we should do - as parents, as teachers, - we should take the risk and let our children experience life - let them get busy with their own experiences and stop feeding them the ones we think they need...

As for demanding with all their might... that tends to be something we as adults try to squash first (lets be honest...). The child is demanding with all its might - and we call it a tantrum! Maybe we should be taking a leaf out of children's books and start throwing a few tantrums of our own to make a few positive changes to the world!!!

Adults have a lot to answer for...

But I think Coelho got it wrong about the "happy for no reason". Go out, look for the reasons Coelho and others think do not exist... because then you WILL find the door to happiness!