A child wanted the door of the play kitchen open. They got hold of the handle and tried it, and tried it, and it came open.
Then they opened the other door too, put a toy inside, and shut it.
With both doors closed they looked in through the clear window at what was in there.
Then they took everything out, and looked in through the window again.
It was raining, so a parachute went down on the floor of the big room. They got up on it, naming the colors, moving one panel at a time.
An adult put a toy watermelon on it and suggested shaking. They came off the parachute, took hold of the handles, and shook it, saying the sound out loud.
Asked what else should go on, one of them fetched a banana out of the basket and put it on. Then the others were asked too, and more and more food went on.
“There's so much on now it's got heavy.”
They took the play kitchen bowls out to the sandpit and filled them with stones and leaves.
Further along, they found ants going up the slide.
They took the stones and the leaves they had gathered and tried to hand them over to the ants.
A child had the toy food out. They put some in a bowl and held it out to another child.
“Uh-uh.”
“Banana.”
And that child took the bowl and pretended to eat.
An adult said there was a nice banana there, and the first one filled the bowl again and passed it over.
An adult offered an apron to a child who was playing at cooking, and put it on for them.
They went to the mirror and looked at themselves in it.
Then they got the kitchen things out and played with the apron on. They handed an adult a cup and a bowl, and when the adult pretended to drink and eat, they took the cup and the bowl back.
When it was over an adult helped them out of the apron.
They carried on with the winter snack play from the day before, using the fish-shaped buns they had made themselves. They gave each bun a name — the mom, the dad, the baby.
Then they put other food in between two of the buns and put a bun back on top, and that was a burger. Another one came out as a pizza.
Later the buns went into a basket, and into a car, and they drove them around the room delivering them.
They were in a box, the way they had been the day before.
“This is our house.”
“Let's go to the market.”
One of them took a basket and went round putting toy food into it, a bit of everything.
“Do you know what I bought?”
They laid it all out on a plate, took it over to the child still in the box, and handed it in.
“Try this. I made it.”
By then everyone was handing food around and pretending to eat it, as if they had all been invited in.
One of them got a baby doll out and gave it a bottle.
“Our baby has to eat too.”
A child was looking at bowls of different shapes and picking up toy food to put in them.
“Ah, ba-ba,” they said, when an adult asked what shape a bowl was.
They felt the bowl over. Then they picked the food up one piece at a time and got it into the bowl, and when a piece went in:
“Ooh.”
“It went right in,” said an adult, and the child smiled and reached for another piece, and moved them from one place to another, over and over.
It was one of the first mornings. A child came in holding a mother's hand and went round the room with her, and found their own photograph on the table and pointed at it.
They watched what another child was doing, then sat down beside them and picked up the same toy.
They held a toy drink up to their mouth and pretended to drink from it, and stacked the drinks up.
Then they cut toy food with a toy knife, and handed what they had cut to the mother, and to an adult.
They held a toy bread and a toy strawberry, one in each hand, and made an eating sound.
Then they caught sight of themselves and another child in the mirror, and smiled.
A child was going through the bowls and the toy food in the kitchen basket. They looked over at the child next to them, and started putting food into the same bowl that child was using.
When the other one put a piece in, they watched, then reached over and put a piece in too, or moved one of their own across.
When the bowl was full they looked at the other child and laughed, and made a sound.
A child got the kitchen things out and cooked.
Then they carried what they had cooked over to an adult and told them to try it.
They put vegetables in a pot and stirred them round with a ladle.
They were building a house for their family out of cardboard bricks, stacking them up into the shape of one. They made it long and wide so that everyone could get inside, passing bricks to each other.
Then bottles and kitchen things came out. Inside the house, they held the baby dolls and fed them from the bottles, and set food out for them.
“Time to eat.”
“Baby's milk.”