Wild Rumpus: Week 2

The Rumpus continues!

We kicked off week 2 with activities provided by the Madison Children's Museum -- giant bubbles, mini stilt cups, and hula hoops.

 

 (more after the jump)

Then, the library brought out... .PAINT!  We let the kids self-serve paint (red and/or yellow) into cups, then provided brushes and let them paint any of the library's play materials that we'd brought.  So now, we have more colorful....

 tubes!

 boxes!

 giant wooden spools!

 and we also provided butcher paper in case anyone wanted to take their painting home (although... I don't think anyone did...)

 These kids REALLY loved painting and got into it with their whole body!

 While most kids went for full-coverage painting, a few (especially the older kids) chose to paint recognizable images.  Check out this cute wooden dog face!

 

In addition to paint, the library also introduced parallel tightropes for the first time this week.

 They were super strong, and I think next week we can try them up a bit higher!

 In my favorite moment of today's Rumpus, one kid managed to sit on TOP of the top tight-rope.  Hooray for Risky Play!  I wonder where this might lead next week?

 

Because there were so many new things to explore, many of the materials that had been a big hit last week didn't see a lot of action this week, but a few kids who hadn't attended week one really enjoyed the tubes in a new way:

 And this family enjoyed making "booby traps" by combining the bungee cords and ropes with the existing playground equipment.

 Even the volleyball net got called into service as these creative kids worked on building a fort!

 

And some kids found play in the puddle made by our water jugs!

 

This week's play stories featured many mentions of the bubbles, paint and tight-ropes:
 

 (I love the drawing of the mini-stilts below!)

 Here's a great play memory from one of the participating adults (sorry about the rotation -- it tells the story of how when she was a child, she used to make cups and bowls out of wet sand and then let them dry before sharing them with other kids to play with.):

 One of our astute volunteers moved the Play Story file box down to the kids' level.  Brilliant!  They loved being able to file their own stories or look for their own notebook within the file!  This will definitely be standard practice from here on out.

A HUGE thank you to the librarians at the Dane County Library Service who helped immensely with a truck transportation logistics snafu this week.  Although I've absent-mindedly forgotten to list them as a partner thus far, their generosity in loaning us the Readmobile to transport materials to and from the park each week has been instrumental in helping to make this event possible. This week, they went above and beyond to help make this process work and I am extremely grateful for their willingness to jump in and help out!

 (Another thank you to my colleague Jennifer who came to my rescue when I had a massive wardrobe malfunction about 45 minutes before this week's Rumpus was scheduled to start. Ack!)