Play at the Beach

It is great to get outdoors and take advantage of our backyard!

Last week we went to the beach to have an explore and a play.  What happened there was extraordinary.  At first many people were playing and building on their own and there was one bigger group building together and slowly the groups work became one big city.  People were co-operating, taking turns, and negotiating.  There were conversations and disagreements about where the garage for the castle would be and who would put the car in it.  But eventually, through some coaching, compromises were made. 

Building the main castle.  We had to work on stabilising the sticks, digging the holes, choosing decorations and deciding how to get them to stay up.

There were a few smaller castles and houses being made.  Stones were used as the doors.

Then we found this massive seaweed.  At first we were just interested in it and how heavy it was.  It was pretty heavy so we had to have team work to move it across the beach.  Then we noticed that dragging the seaweed was making something that looked like a road. 

We took turns making the roads go around all the buildings and creations in our city. 

Then some of us decided we were the line-works men and women and we started using sticks to draw the lines in the sand.  Some of us outlined the road and others made the middle dotted line.  Cities have roads and roads have lines to keep the cars and people in the right places.

Overall it was an afternoon filled with fun, imagination, creativity and lots of managing ourselves and relating to others.  There was also lots of thinking and questioning going on.  Will our structures stay up? Should this go here? Will this fit here? How can we make it stronger?

This week we are also going to the beach and we can't wait to see what gets created this time!