Today, two boys at a kindergarten were playing in the trees at the kindergarten , announcing their story lines aloud as they played. One was a huge giant cracking the earth open ( with a piece of stick) and eating people like me (Why? Reply: Because I’m a baddie!) and the other repeated over and over about a rock falling off the sky tower and attempted, it seemed , to create the high tower (with a stick). They were actually playing together and yet had no problem with the complex and conflicting story lines.
After a little dialogue, I agreed to be a stone falling off the Sky Tower. It seemed preferable to being eaten by a malevolent giant. I asked if I would be pushed or if I would just jump. Jump, he replied. It seemed hard to my adult mind to jump from a flat place on the grass surrounded by a nest of dead twigs. I wanted to be higher up. The boy did a lilo-pumping gesture and announced that I was now higher up! How easy it is when you play! I felt a bit embarrassed at my limited imagination. I held my nose (for some instinctual reason) and leapt out of the stick circle, crouching as I landed. When they called me back to be eaten by giants , I explained that I couldn’t because I had shattered into a million pieces when I hit the concrete. They looked at me in a quiet, satisfied and secretive sort of way and I knew I had played well. I left them then. This is another beauty of play. You can leave whenever you like! You simply wander off. The beauty of these children was that they went right back to their intrinsically motivated game, not at all reliant on the attention of an adult.
I had a delightful morning. I was on ‘outside duty’ and the teacher explained that they didn’t put toys out, except for spades really. If the children wanted anything, they knew they only had to ask. Sure enough, there was no clutter of ‘stuff’, just swings, open space, a slope (!!) climbing frames, a vegetable garden, a sand pit ( with only spades and three trucks), a few twigs and sticks from the recent storm, and children. I have never seen such vigorous, collaborative and imaginative play in a mainstream centre. The social skills , the communication skills, the bartering of roles and relationships were just marvellous. These children clearly had a sense of well being, belonging and empowerment.
When you have no toys and no props, bar a few sticks and a few bits of fabric, you have to tell people what your game is about. You have to be articulate and ask for what you want; you have to clarify if you have a problem. A boy ran past, calling out ‘Who wants to play armies?’ and two boys rushed off to join him. Another two boys spent over an hour creating boundaries around a ‘construction site’ in the sandpit. There were no ropes or signs, only scratchings in the sand and some pretty powerful assertions of a foreman-like quality, but there was a huge amount of spoken language.
I was reminded of another kindergarten where I worked as a reliever last month. Their centre is being refurbished and they are temporarily rehoused in a church hall, so they have to set up every week, and day. Therefore they don’t put much out. The teacher commented that with less play ‘stuff ‘, the children were playing in much more complex, collaborative and creative ways.
Why is this the case? If one takes a parallel from an adult context, one might imagine the difference between going to Rainbow’s End and going to a West Coast beach. At the former, one is impelled to try everything, in a sort of retail therapy consumer daze. At the beach, and nothing is laid on and one is responsible for one’s own amusement and exploration patterns. One’s creative and playful juices start to flow as one gathers shells, climbs a sand dune or invites someone to race into the shallows with you.
A big and crucial difference at this centre today compared to many where I work is that there really is enough room to run and chase and roll and tumble. Most centres don’t have enough space for children to get up to even a slow trot before they hit a fence. And as for a slope! Heaven forbid, a slope! They might get up speed and hurt themselves. I saw no one fight and no one injured by a stick today.