a bit of a scary story

Light has emerged where we least expected it...under the table. Even as a rapidly aging "grown up" there was truly some magical element in playing under the table this morning. We covered the largest table we have...which really is not that large...with a blanket and left a prompt in the covered den. Two flashlights, a basket of wood cutoffs, wooden spools, and glass stones.

I shimmied under the table at first to get the first few started and then I sat outside the covered fort and listened...sometimes popping my camera under the blanket for a shot or video.

Build it and knock it down. One of the first to visit the space found it a safe space
 for constructing and deconstructing. 

And on the other end of the spectrum, a "house" built carefully over the course of 30 minutes that no one could take apart.
Later, a Stop sign was created that said "don't take it down" and taped nearby.

The photo above inspired a story that is too beautiful an example of play-based early literacy not to share. The story lasted three minutes and this video captures a portion from the middle. After she told her story I asked if we could show the video of her story to friends during circle time and she agreed. We all watched the video and then had a conversation about what we saw (using an organic, see, think, wonder framework for the discussion). The group remembered the elements of their friend's story...spoiler alert: the characters get eaten by a lion! And it inspired us to wonder about our own storytelling. It looks like we have a plan now to create our own sculptures using wood and use flashlights.  

Here is the story in its entirety...

Once upon a time there was 4 kids that were going to school. Then a wolf came and eat them. He came to ate the baby. And he bring him to the cave then and said, "where's my baby?" and walk to the cave and take him away so the wolf doesn't eat him. Then the biggest wolf in the world came and ate all those guys and bring him to his little lion. The lion did want to eat them. And then they tried to run away with the baby. The baby run away to his house. Then two crocodiles came and snap him. And they went back to their house. The End!

I will share more in the next post about the trajectory of this emerging project - where we started and where we are going!