Finally some great weather and an incredible turnout (185 people)! And with a large group, comes.... waiting lines. (Check out the kid lying on the ground at the end. It's so hard to WAIT!) This is hard for me to watch because I know that one of the central concepts of AnjiPlay is "plenty" or even "abundance" so that a limitation in equipment never gets in the way of play and is less likely to cause conflict between kids fighting over a scarcity of equipment. That being said, the kids this week did an incredible job of doing their own line management and taking turns and that was impressive to watch.
Or sometimes, they just all piled up the ladder at the same time.
(continue reading after the jump)
Or just gave up on the ladder altogether and hung from the branch itself.
Once again, the marker boards offered lots of literacy opportunities!
Check out the collaboration around these marker boards! So many friends working together!
A nearby adult told me that the idea for this cherry planting sign came from the kids seeing the fort sign above asking for help from anyone interested in helping out. I love the raised beds and the careful rows of cherries.
The "cherries" from a tree in the park (which had been in the sand when we showed up this week) made for some really rich imaginative play this week.
Can you see how she's made square pillars (using the molds) to hold her squares up in the sand?
These sisters were trying to dig a tunnel that would connect their two holes in the sand.
I don't think they quite reached their goal this week.
I'm intrigued by this wet sand technique:
The blocks saw some action this week as well. Lots of stacked curves!
After the wall above fell down, they re-built it with a double-layer of crescents.
I loved watching the engineering action here. These guys worked together for a long time, hooking the hose up to the nozzle of the water jug and watching the water come out.
When the water pressure wasn't strong enough, one of them sat on top of the water bladder to increase the flow of the water.
This fort was the result of a lot of kids working together for a long time.
Check out their "comfy chair"!
Another instance of scarcity today was that both of the spools were used in the fort almost right after our program opened. During the program, several kids asked where the spools were because they wanted to keep working on balancing on top of them. They did find other activities to try, but as soon as the fort was disassembled during clean-up, someone popped right up on top of one to try walking.
(can you see the fingers in the photo below?)
The slack lines saw some gymnastic action today.
And this little guy was just captivated by the wheel on this stroller (not his own!) and with tipping it up and down.
new meaning to "painting with water"
Here are a few play stories from this week:
And I've been thinking about ways to get the reflection piece more incorporated into the flow of the program, so this week we finally tried these signs with pictures and my blog comments from the previous week posted near the similar play equipment. We did notice some of the kids stopping to look at the photos and talk about them.
Here is a photo of our pack-up process. I've been working on designing covers for our wooden carts to "wear" while they travel in the trailer to keep stuff from falling off of the shelves.
Then, when they're not in use as covers, I'm hoping to use them to display play stories. (this was the beta-test version this week!)
Want to see even more Wild Rumpus action?
Here's the week 5 post from the east side!
Please note: "Anji Play,” refers to a specific philosophy and comprehensive approach to early education developed by Ms. Cheng Xueqin in Anji County, China. I use the term "Anji Play" to describe my programming and throughout this blog with the explicit permission of Ms. Cheng because our programming has been developed as part of a close collaborative relationship with her and her team of Anji Play educators. If you are interested in learning more about how you can bring Anji Play to your community, please visit www.anjiplay.com
No comments:
Post a Comment