Week 3 - Monday 24th April

Well it was a pretty busy week, but we knew it would be! We had a great time running workshops with the nursery children and started off by observing them in their playground on the first day back at school. All the children were in great spirits, happy to see each other again after the Easter break. We observed them playing in the tunnels, on the tyres and then slowly introduced different elements that we had been playing with in the previous weeks. The fabric was the first to come out and was a huge success - for about 20 minutes most of the children were all under the three pieces of fabric, parading around the playground chanting different songs, and playing games with each other. It seems hiding and moving around is big hit.

After that we brought out the woven palm baskets and cardboard boxes. The children were pretty inventive, imaginative and collaborative, playing games and experimenting with different ways to use the items. They covered themselves with the fabric inside the baskets, put the baskets inside the tyres and climbed in all together and played games. The idea of enclosure and feeling snug seemed to appeal.

Because it was the first day back at school, many of the other classrooms were being prepared and so children from other classes in the school started to come into the playground as well as the nursery children over the course of the morning. It got fairly busy and raucous and really highlighted the need for a fence to protect the space for the younger ones. It also made us very aware of the fact that older children were really keen to play (they loved the tyres and making games with them) and started us thinking about the need to create something for older children outside of the nursery playground. One of the teachers, Modou Corr, said that he thought that if there were tyres the children could come up with their own games and ideas for play in another part of the school.

We also noticed that the youngest children wanted somewhere to read, write and be quiet. some of them were sitting by a fence, a small group were writing balanced on a tyre and another boy quietly observed the proceedings in the playground from his snug position in a cardboard box!

We also tried out the 'speaking tube' which is in fact a length of bendy plastic tube around 20-25 metres long where children can speak in one end and someone else can listen at the other. The children had a lot of fun with this, singing songs and chatting to each other. They also turned it into a game and started skipping and jumping over it. This made us think about making one out of metal which could be played with like this.