Merry Christmas Everyone!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

 

Thank you for reading our blog over the past year, we hope you have enjoyed it. We'll be taking a little break over the festive period but will be back with more playful projects and photos in January.

 

Here's a few pics from our Christmas party at the Shop of Possibilities to get you in the festive spirit:

 

Tamzin and Patrick stand proud alongside their Christmas card competition entries

Santa hats and tinsel

A skipping santa

Christmas craft

Christmas bling!

 

See you in 2014!



Play Pieces: December

This year has certainly flown by! We've got up to all sorts at the Shop of Possibilities and Play Local this year, and here is our final Play Pieces of 2013.

 

We practiced our gymnastics

Got stuck to walls with tape...

...and then had help to get free

 

Go Kart!

An example of when an adult initiated 'project' can become a starting point for lots of interesting play. It highlights that sometimes an adult intervention can become a starting point for the children and give them something new and different to think about and play with.

 

Below shows Elijah's slightly wobbly Go Kart, the children that gravitated towards it and how they played with it afterwards.

 

 

Christmas Arrives at the Shop...

I have never heard squeals of joy quite so loud as when a some of our regular children arrived at the Shop of Possibilities on Tuesday to a table full of tinsel and a wall full of decorations...

 

As a child you're probably not supposed to actually play with the Christmas decorations, so it was fun seeing the children rummage around in the tinsel and wrapping it around themselves before they decorated the space with it.

 

So the Shop of Possibilities now has a temporary and environmentally friendly Christmas tree, plenty of paper chains and tinsel everywhere. All ready for our Christmas Party!

 

The temporary tree

Santa's little helper decorating the room

 

Making paper chains

The decorated tree

Rainy Day Play Time

 Rain doesn't stop play here. In fact we saw a lot of really interesting and unexpected play happen whilst the rain was falling and the wind was trying to knock us over...

 

It began inside with some balancing and jumping:

 

 

Changing the Playground

The children on Elmington estate have been working with artist Laura Carle throughout November. During her last session they all worked outside building various types of structures mainly with wood and tarpaulin. Throughout their time working with Laura, the children have built up skills in making, but also confidence in creating, demonstrated here by a spontaneous action carried out by a couple of the children using tape and the fixed playground itself. Have a look at the images below to see how this action dramatically changed one of the fixed elements of the playground:

 

Buckets

An entertaining, noisy and active start to the session last Saturday. Knocking down as many buckets as you can, you had to stand behind the line, you got bonus points if the bucket fell directly on top of another, and each turn you had to step back the same number of steps as buckets you hit. Here's what it looked like: