Play Pieces: May

 Lots more playful happenings to share with you this month. Lots of mess, lots of noise and lots of playing everywhere and anywhere with anything! Here's the round up of what went on throughout May at the Shop of Possibilities and during Play Local offsite sessions.

We got swallowed up by all the junk...

We climbed on top of piles of junk...

Limbo!

Found snug places to sit...

Did some skipping...

Washed the windows with a broom...

And expertly removed the excess water with a dustpan...

We watered the allotments and the weeds...

We played with things leftover from a workshop in the gallery...

We sunbathed...

Built giant lego towers...

We wrapped up to do our exercises...

Made paper necklaces...

Were cheeky monkeys in our own little dens...

Played some tug of war...

Found new uses for cling film...

And played outside despite the rain!

Netting

 This week for Play Local on Elmington estate the team decided to only take one type of material along with them. Their choice was some green netting that is usually used around scaffolding, and it's proved successful during previous sessions, but we wondered what might happen if that was the only choice of material we presented the children with and actually quite a lot happened:

It became a giant catapult...

It got trampled on and dragged all over the place...

It got wrapped around the children themselves...

It got ignored by some too...

It got wrapped around children, staff and the roundabout...

...who then had to try and escape!

Twigs and Sticks

We're pretty thrifty at the Shop of Possibilities, and like to think we (children and staff!) can see play potential in a lot of abandoned objects and materials. This post is about a bunch of twigs and sticks found on Elmington estate by Jack which he brought back to the Shop of Possibilities for the children to play with. This how they were used:

Initially one became a walking stick

We used it to measure who was tallest. Lamare won.

Tracing patterns on the floor

They became sports equipment

This one made a perfect hockey stick

They were used in a slightly more abstract sculptural way

Which provoked a serious response from Ben

Simple stuff, but lots of fun!

A Scary Tree Swing

There's not much that hasn't already been said about a DIY tree swing on the blog already, but this one was particularly scary so we thought it was worth posting!

Giant Den Building

A rather big play project on the blog today. I choose the word project very carefully as this spontaneous den building activity was carefully project managed throughout the session by some of the children...

Performing Noise

More (sort of) musical noisy treats outside the Shop of Possibilities today. Our in house band set up their kit and played to other children, staff and passers by. We were even treated to a bit of a dance too...

Carving Sticks

Things were getting a little bit primal on Elmington estate this weekend. The children got stuck into carving sticks into spears, learning some great survival skills during the process. It seemed that the process itself was perhaps more interesting than the end result, and even our Playwork Assistants really enjoyed the practical repetitive play.

Leftovers

 Children play with anything: things they are allowed to play with and things they are not allowed to play with. Things that were made to be a play thing and things where play was never its intended purpose. Children at The Shop of Possibilities are continually presented with (non-play) objects that are familiar, things they've seen elsewhere such as chairs, cupboards and fabric which they re purpose to suit their play but which often hold on to some of the properties of the items original intended function. 

However sometimes they are given strange things which have already been used by somebody else, things that don't fit into their collection of everyday found objects and that have no purpose other than being something that we are allowed to play with. Today was one of those days where we were presented with leftovers from a family workshop at the gallery, and the children were left to their own devices to see what they could make of them.

In the original workshop they were crawled through, in our session children rolled each other around in them: