Anji Play Date: Week 2

 Same materials, a few new kids, always fresh play.

Week 2 saw a continued interest in the clay.  There was stacking:

 

And whacking (I'd shown the video of last week's clay hammer at the beginning of today's event, so it's possible that this kiddo was inspired by that.  I loved his energetic banging on the table--he was definitely getting some full-body motion out of this play!)

 And last week's hammer turned into this week's popsicles!

 One of the older children who attended today made this clay person.  She described it to me and said that the top piece of clay was the person's face ("she has lots of eyes"), the rolls on top are her hair, the sticks on the side are her arms, the stick connecting the two pieces of clay is her neck, the second piece of clay is her chest and the other two sticks are her arms.  I was intrigued that the anatomy of this 3D person seems to follow developmentally the same trends that you see in children's drawings of people at this age.  Here's a nice blog post about the different stages in children's drawings.

There was also a little more action on the red tops this week.  I liked this innovation:

 

Also, lots of piling and lining up:

 

 

The blocks saw some excellent structures this week:

A "horsey"

Here's the play story about the scene above:

 see that toe?  It's JUST about to knock down this great tower of circles.  What a fun crash!

This artist chose to make drawings for his parents.

These kids found a way to have fun while doing the clean-up!  Having the kids clean up their own playthings is a very key part of Anji Play.  It affords opportunities for them to continue the play like this but also come up with ingenious ways of moving materials from one place to another, working together with other kids.

 

The kids who are attending this event tend to be a bit younger than the 3-6 year old age range that Anji Play in China was created for.  Therefore, our Play Stories look a little different (see link above about children's development in art).  Here are a few from this week, some with dictated notes taken by parents.

 The picture below says, "My picture is itchy." which is what the artist had said, confounding her mom until she realized that she'd offered her daughter a sheet of "scratch paper."