We've started doing some very basic storytelling and play-acting with our group this week. The first opportunity was spontaneous in origin: the children were having a blast playing under our newly made spiderweb of yarn which created a low canopy of sorts, V and B pretending to be spiders crawling in a web. I asked them to share their stories with me, and after writing them down, the children acted them out.
V's story: "Once upon a time there was two spiders and the spiders went to find some food." V and B were spiders and they ate their 'food' with large scooping hands and loud 'Owp! Owp!' sounds.
T's story: "Cluck Cluck. Once upon a time there was five cluck clucks they were playing they were running a race and they hit a straight corner and they said 'mommy mommy' and they had to go to the hospital and then the end." T said he wanted to act his story out with horse chestnuts, so we counted out five from the bowl, lined them up and then they all had a turn 'hitting the straight corner', which is actually the edge angle of two adjacent walls. The little cluck clucks did cry for their mommy, and the story was finished.
B's story: "About a fish. They swim. It has a buddy. It swims with the camel." B was the fish and V offered to be the camel; as I read their story back to them, they wiggled around on the floor, laughing, under the spiderweb.
On Tuesday, we read a sweet book on cooperation called "The Biggest Pumpkin Ever" about two mice who have differing intention for the same pumpkin. Later, we painted pumpkins with their choice of colors. B commented as she painted "I'm coloring a lot!" and T, perhaps observing the curved surface of the pumpkin, said "This is like painting yourself". We are working on holding our paintbrushes in our fingers, not our fists, and I think the children are noticing that they have better control of their work with their fingers. On Wednesday I brought the dry,colorful pumpkins to Gathering and asked the children to tell me some Pumpkin stories for us to act out.
B's story: "My Mommy she cooks it and puts it on a plate." To act this out (as I read it, bit by bit), B decided to be herself and V wanted to be the Mommy. We used an imaginary plate, and V repeated her 'lines'. "I put it on a plate for you and now you can eat it." They noisily pretended to eat the pumpkin.
T's story: "At the house. It gets so so little. It got this little. They cut it up and put it in the fridge and then then grind it up and then it goes into the corn patch." T decided to act this one solo, using his hands to demonstrate how little his pumpkin became; the chopping and grinding were quite lively.
V's story: "This pumpkin will be in a cornfield and it will grow big and I'm going to take the biggest pumpkin to the pumpkin place. Mallory will cook the pumpkin and V will eat it." V was herself, B was Mallory; V used her body to show how big her pumpkin became, stretching her arms to the sky.
We'll be doing more play-acting in the weeks ahead.
Later on Wednesday, our easel painting offered a pumpkin-shaped paper and some red and yellow paint for color mixing. Some painters relished this and created some orangey hues. Not to limit our art time to brushes, I also offered paper, crayons and scissors; their activity seemed to center on doing a lot of cutting and finding envelopes to put the pieces in to take home.
Other moments of our week:
Our little group loves the newest song "Five Little Pumpkins"* and gets very excited before we sing it at Gathering. We also enjoyed a cooperative matching game of Baby Animals and Their Mothers.
Outdoors, we dug holes in the ground a planted a few daffodil bulbs around. The children had fun placing the bulbs in their holes and covering them back up. We've also been "poofing" the calendula petals all over the place, especially happy when the orange flowers fall into our hair and faces.
V and T finish lunch early and build a "track" with blocks for their cars to go on. Once B finished her lunch, she too joined in the fun. Then we had fun being cranes and bulldozers, scooting all the blocks back to the shelf to be put away.
B and V working together on the letter and numbers puzzle. B stood next to V and helped her find the correct places for pieces.
T and V again playing 'skateboards' with magnetic blocks.
Long fun conversation overheard at the rice bin~
V- Ice cream! Who wants ice cream?
seconds later...
V-Help! Where's my hand? Where's my hand again? (hand buried in rice)
T-I'll find it.
B-There it is!
B offers us chocolate ice cream.
V-I'm hungry. Can you give us something to eat please?
B-You want me to make some food for you?
V-Yeah. (B gets busy putting rice into cups. I ask what she's making.)
B-Chocolate.
T, scooping rice. "I'm a cement truck. I can go beep beep beep so deep. Cement can go deep and become hard as a rock. It actually goes for the cement."
I couldn't have said it better myself! See you next week!
*For those of you who are familiar with the Five Little Pumpkins song~ I've changed a lyric line from "'The second one said 'There's witches in the air'" to "The second one said 'It's chilly in the air'". I know that many children can have different feelings about the decorations they are seeing around Halloween time and I want to be sensitive in that respect. Kids can somewhat appreciate explanations about being "silly" or that some people like to 'get the shivers' or 'feel creepy crawly'. With so many more realistic-looking decorations these days, finding safe language that doesn't go into detail about those characters but instead discusses the feelings they might inspire can help.
Five Little Pumpkins
Five little pumpkins sitting at the gate
The first one said "Oh my, it's getting late"
The second one said "It's chilly in the air"
The third one said "But we don't care"
The fourth one said "Let's run and run and run"
The fifth one said "I'm ready for some fun"
SO~Whoosh! came the wind and
Out! went the light
And five little pumpkins rolled out of sight!
