We were in the park one day last week; Albie was playing in the trees with A hunting for the Gruffalo (their favourite park pastime), J was playing on the climbing frame, and I was sat with M in the sandpit digging in the sand with our hands as I had forgotten to pack spades. It was a lovely afternoon, the sun was shining, our tummies were full from the picnic we had eaten, and everyone was happy.
We had been at the park a few hours when another family arrived, there was a boy that I would guess was aged approximately 3 years old with his Mum. The boy ran straight over to M and myself sat in the sand, he watched us for a few seconds and then he too began to dig with his hands. At this, his Mum came over and shouted at him to not touch the sand as it was "dirty". I was a little perplexed at this, but said nothing. The little boy returned to the sand another 2 times, only for his Mum to pull him away from the sand each time. Eventually Mum shouted at the boy "do not go near that sand again, we have not come to the park to get dirty!"
The boy didn't come back to the sand. The boy and his Mum left the park after about 10 minutes.
We eventually left the park some time later; the four children and myself all had dirty fingernails, grubby hands, mud and sand on our clothes, and the children all had slightly grubby faces too (I like to think my face was at least clean!)
We had a lovely day, exploring our surroundings, finding "treasure" (feathers, twigs, conkers, walnuts, leaves and dandelions), playing with our friends, playing on the play equipment, and learning lots of things in the process too!
I am so glad that the parents of the children I look after are happy for their children to get dirty and messy. Here are a few photos of the children doing what they do best....
I have been attempting to make Flubber for a while, I finally succeeded last night and I was very excited! It was perfectly timed, as it literally did not stop raining once today, so I needed lots of indoor play ideas for the children.
The children were fascinated with it, they prodded it, squashed it, rolled it into a ball, cut it up, and played with it for hours on end. I left the flubber out all day and the children came back to it time and time again. It was an amazing success, the flubber is currently wrapped in a freezer bag in my fridge, ready for playing with tomorrow.
Over the last few weeks J has been pointing out colours to me - what a clever boy! I try to encourage the children's knowledge of colour and other things by describing the things that we see, hear and smell as we are out and about - "who can open the yellow gate for me please?; what do the pink roses smell like?; which colour bin are the bin men emptying now?....
In order to build on J's growing interest in colour I planned some colourful activities for the children. I made some rainbow rice - doesn't it look pretty!
The children were eager to get playing. We talked about the different colours of the rainbow before the rice got mixed up. Albie and A used the rice during their role play, pretending to bake cakes and make curry, using the funnels and pots throughout. A was able to pick up grains of rice using the children's chopsticks, Albie managed to pick up the pots using the chopsticks.
J was hesitant to touch the rice with his hands, he preferred to use the spoons to scoop up the rice to put it in the pots. J chose to add dinosaurs to the rice mixture during his play.
M immediately put his hands into the rice, scooping up huge handfuls of rice and letting it fall back into the container, he was totally engrossed in this activity for 10 minutes.
I was pleasantly surprised that none of the children tried to put the rice into their mouths - perhaps the children are learning that I will give them things to play with that they are not allowed to eat?
We also played with coloured water (with added glitter as we all love glitter!). I filled both sides of the water table with clean water, then I put drops of food colouring onto the children's hands so that they could mix it in themselves. We had red on one side and yellow on the other. The older children particularly liked having the red food colour on their hands as they pretended they were bleeding! The children had lots of fun mixing the water up, resulting in one big pool of dark orange water.
J tried to drink the water as it fell off the spinning water wheel!!
On Tuesday morning the babies and myself went for a trip to the local park before the wet weather forecast for the rest of the week set in. The children had lots of fun playing on the play equipment, however perhaps the most fun of all was had when we found some sticks and wrote our names in the sand with them.
M loves the feel of the super soft sand in his hands and on his feet, he becomes very giddy, kicking his feet and laughing when I put him in the sand.
J found his own stick and told me proudly "big stick!"
Later in the afternoon I got the shaving foam out, and added some food colouring for a bit of contrast - I didn't add enough food colouring so next time I will add more, also next time I will try the shaving foam in the builders tray in the back garden, to give everyone a little more room to play, and to provide more area to make marks in the foam, and to also make the clean up operation a little easier for me, as things did get rather messy!!
