Wild Rumpus, week 8 (Special East Side Edition!): the day of ice packs

This week, I subbed on the East Side for Miss Holly and boy was it a doozy!  I think we gave out six ice packs (after a summer of handing out a total of maybe 3?) in one day.  But guess what?  Two were for bee stings, one was for a bleeding head-wound from the playground equipment (not AnjiPlay equipment) and the others were for minor injuries (scraped knees and sore fingers that had had blocks fall on them).  Considering we introduced a huge new piece of AnjiPlay equipment today, I'm happy to say that no injuries were sustained because of the new addition!  Want to see it?  It's so exciting....

A GIANT ORANGE CLIMBING CUBE!!! Woo Hoo!!!  I'll give it a separate blog post to talk about how it came into existence, but for now, can we talk about the fort they built on top of the cube?  WOW it was tall!  And boy did it make the grown-ups nervous.  I encouraged worried adults to simply stand near enough that if a wall started to topple, they could reach out and stop it from tumbling onto someone walking below on the ground. 

But even I reached my own limits when the kids on top started chucking blocks from the top down onto the kids below.  I stepped in and told them that was out of bounds and it felt odd to be directing their play even in that way.  It made me realize that I want to work more on developing a way to get the verbal play reflections (with a group of kids) to be part of our program, so that the kids can come up with their own set of guidelines that they themselves can enforce.  But once the kiddos who wanted to wage war left to go home, other kids quickly scrambled up and the nature of the play changed.

Check out this bridge they built from the ladder to the top of the cube:

 She was making "lemonade"

 and "muffins"

 

I also like this ingenious way to use the ladder to reach the blocks high up on the cart:

 And this bucket to transfer a bunch of tubes:

 And this catapult? ramp? Very fancy.

 

The rollers were a big hit:

 Can you see how he's using a spool as a step-stool?

 At the east side location, the library's book bike becomes a mobile library!

 So much cozy reading...

 This is an excellent drawing of the splash pad that is part of this park!

 I noticed that this park had several piles of mostly-spent charcoal dumped on the ground.  I love that some kids found it and decided to use it as an art supply!

 Play equipment can even be incorporated into a picnic table!

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