Play tents

The basket goes up, the pompoms stay in

Teacher Yepark went first. Fill the basket with pompoms, both hands on it, up and over the roof of the plastic tent.

Bori filled it to the top. That part was easy.

Then both hands round it, up on tiptoe, arms straight above — and the pompoms stayed where they were.

Another go. The basket got higher that time, and waved about up there, and came back down still full.

There were other baskets to try. A wider one. One with handles. The arms went up one way and then a different way, and Bori's face after each go said how it had gone.

A few did make it over. Most of them came back down on the floor, which meant picking them up, which meant filling the basket again.

Which they all did, and then went back up on tiptoe.

Which part is the weak one?

The tent had been up since the day before, and today the camping things came with it — bedding, skewers, plates, a bag.

The bedding was what would finish it. It went over the roof, and the tent came down.

Nobody said anything for a moment.

“Why did it collapse?”

“Which part is the weak one?”

“I think it's weak at the bottom.”

“Let's join more of the straw pieces on.”

So the bottom went back up thicker, with bracing, and the work got shared out.

By then so many of them wanted tents of their own that the straw pieces ran out. Teacher Yubok suggested other blocks. They tried those and came back to the straw ones — the ones that had fallen down — and more were ordered for the next day.

The next day there were enough, and the one tent became tents all over the room.

“This is where you sleep!”

“Let's grill meat tonight!”

Things went onto skewers and got held over the fire. Somebody cooked, somebody ate, somebody kept the fire going, and the rest went in and out of the tents carrying whatever was needed.

I'll wait at the other end

The tunnel tent went down along one end of the room and somebody was through it before it had finished unrolling.

Bori stayed out where the light was and watched.

Teacher Yepark did not come over and carry Bori in. She went round to the far end and sat down there.

“There's a ball gone in the tunnel. Shall we go and find it? I'll wait at the other end.”

Then a hand, held out low at the mouth of it. “Come on, then.”

One hand, one knee, then the other. The dark part was short.

Teacher Yepark was at the end of it, which was the whole point.

After that it was through, round, and through again — sometimes following somebody, sometimes meeting somebody head-on halfway, and later with a ball rolled in first to chase.

Then the tunnel got stood on its end with Bori inside it, and lifted, and put back down.

“Peekaboo.”

“Boo,” said Bori, from underneath.

Somebody else tipped their head over sideways instead, which was the same thing done another way. And then there were hands coming up all round the tunnel, from children who had not said anything at all but wanted it next.

Four at a time, then

Six of them got in, and the tent held six the way a tent holds six.

“It's actually like real camping, isn't it?”

“It's too tight. I think too many of us came in.”

Teacher Yubok asked what they wanted to do about it.

“If too many of us come in it's tight, so only five people come in.”

Five, then. And five was fine, until somebody lay down.

“Right, time to sleep.”

“It's still too tight. I don't think five works either. Four at a time, then.”

What kept it going The number never came from Teacher Yubok. It came from them, twice — five while they were sitting, four once somebody tried lying down.

There's meant to be a fire pit

The tent already had somebody in it, lying down with a doll.

“Can I come in too?”

“Yeah!”

Room got made, and the two of them lay side by side looking at the roof.

“This is brilliant, isn't it?”

Outside, the cooking had started. “We're camping, so Mum's going to grill you some meat.” Food went onto plates and the plates went onto a box, and more food came from two other people until the box was covered.

They stood round it to eat.

“You'd be more like campers sitting down,” said Teacher Yubok, and handed over some blocks.

The blocks went into a row and became the chairs.

Then Chaewon spent a while looking at the camping picture on the wall.

“There's meant to be a fire pit.”

“What could we use for a fire pit?” said Teacher Yubok.

“Blocks. Blocks would do it.”

So the blocks came back and the fire pit went up, and Teacher Yubok looked at it.

“There's no fire in it, though.”

The hairdryer arrived. Food went down into the pit, the hairdryer went over the top, and that was it lit.

“I've done marshmallows with my mum.”

“Me too.”

What kept it going Teacher Yubok named the two things that were missing, and left it to somebody else to say what they were made of.

You put a bit in at a time

Two of them had the tower going when a third came over.

“Can I do it with you?”

Room got made on one side, and after that it went up one brick each, turn about, which was a rule nobody announced.

Then the plate went on top of it.

“It's like camping.”

“Have you been camping?”

“Yeah. Mum and Dad and my brother and the dog. All of us went. It was brilliant.”

Meat went on the plate, and the plate got held over nothing in particular, and that was the grilling.

“It's properly like camping now. Let's build a tent out of the bricks as well.”

The bricks went round the table, wall by wall, until the table was inside.

“What about a door?”

Some of the bricks came back out, and the gap they left was the door.

“Meat's ready! Come and eat!”

“Have we got marshmallows? Marshmallows are brilliant done on a fire.”

“No marshmallows. There's prawns, though.”

So the prawns went on.

Then a long piece out of the kimbap set arrived.

“This is wood, this is.”

It went into one of the holes in a brick. Another went in beside it.

“That does look like a fire with real wood in it.”

“That's firewood, that's called,” said Chaewon.

“More firewood. We need loads.”

“If you put loads in you just get smoke and it's dangerous. You put a bit in at a time.”

A chair got dragged over to it.

“The fire's warm.”

Then the tent went away

The house tent had photographs on it. Everybody's family, one to a wall.

“Where's Bori? And there's the one from next door as well,” said Teacher Yepark.

A finger went onto a face. Then inside, and out through the window, and in again. The window was for putting a face through.

“Peekaboo.”

Toys started going in. Then armfuls of them.

Then the leaning began — one of them against a wall, then two, then the wall going down under them and coming back up.

“If it goes over, somebody gets hurt,” said Teacher Yepark. “Shall we sit down and play slowly?”

They sat down. Then they leaned again.

It got said again. They sat down again. It happened again.

So the tent came down and got put away, and the room had no house in it.

They went and looked at the photographs anyway.

The baby's been born

They had been talking that day about what it is like for a baby inside its mother.

“It must have been dark in there.”

“The baby was curled up small, they said.”

Then a little tent came out, and a tunnel with it, and they had names for both of them straight away. The tunnel was the way in. The tent was the mother.

So they curled up small — the way they had just said the baby did — and went through the tunnel, into the dark part, and stayed there.

Then back out.

“The baby's been born!”

“Waah, waah!”

After that there was an order to it, and everybody got a turn at being born.

“The mother has to hold the baby.”

In through the window

The cardboard house had a door on it, and the door had a flap that needed lifting and holding open.

Nobody used it.

They went in through the window. They went in through whichever hole was nearest. Two of them met halfway, one going in and one coming out, and neither could get past the other.

Teacher Yepark did not fix the door.

She put a tent up next to the house.

After that there were two places to be inside of, and the traffic sorted itself out — some in the house, some in the tent, one at a time instead of all at the same hole.

The crayons went in with them, and the stickers, and by the end of it the walls had been drawn on from the inside too.

Two fires

The seafood came out on the second day of the camping — squid, prawns on skewers, a whole tray of it.

“That's a squid!”

“Prawn skewers!”

There were two campfires for all of that.

One of them went off round the room under somebody's arm and stayed there, and the arguing started wherever it had got to.

At the other one, two of them worked out an order between themselves without anybody asking them to, and cooked side by side, and held a skewer out to a third.

“Try this.”

Then they built a camping spot of their own, which was inside the tent, and the cooking went in there, and the eating after it.

Which worked until there were enough of them in the tent for elbows to start landing on people.

Leaf blankets

A squirrel got put down on the fallen leaves, and the first thing that happened to it was that somebody buried it.

“The squirrel ran away!”

Then the other animals went under too, and the autumn seeds with them.

“This is the animals' house.”

After that the leaves stopped being a house and became armfuls — gathered up, thrown as high as they would go, watched all the way down. And when enough of them had come down, they were something to lie in.

“It's soft.”

“It smells.”

And it was from down there that somebody worked out what they were lying in.

“This is like camping. Let's do leaf camping!”

Teacher Yubok brought out a tent, and the camping things with it. The leaves went round the tent. The animals went on top of the leaves.

“We're camping.”

“Leaf blankets.”

It's so cozy in here

It had all been made the day before — the shop where the fish would get fried, the tent to rest in, the ice with the fish set into it. This was the morning it opened.

They walked round it first, checking, and set the rules while they went.

“This is the shop. We'll fry the fish here.”

“You can't go that way from the fishing hole.”

Then it opened, and the rules held. What nobody had made a rule about was where everybody would want to be.

The shop filled up. The fishing hole did not. The ones in the tent lay back against the sides of it and stayed there.

“It's so cozy in here.”

Whoever did catch a fish carried it over in a basket.

“Here you go, boss, I brought you a fish.”

And then sat down at the table with whatever came back out of the fryer, and talked while they ate it.

Which is how the fishing hole ran out. Every fish that got caught went to the shop, and stayed at the shop, until there were none left in the ice to catch.

“What about taking just one fish over each time?” said Teacher Yubok.

Some of them nodded.

“This one's mine, though. I caught it. I can't give it back.”

Where shall I hide the treasure?

One of them had been lying in the cave tent, kicking at the inside of it and rolling about until it came down.

“This is a space for playing in together,” said Teacher Yubok. “If you wreck it, your friends can't play.”

It came down again after that.

Then the treasure box arrived, planned the day before, and the same child sat down with it and started folding.

“I can do it on my own.”

Chaewon was already past the box and onto what goes inside it.

“I'm going to hide the treasure. Where shall I hide it?”

Chaewon stood looking around the room.

“If it's going to be hidden, a treasure map might be good,” said Teacher Yubok. “What do you think?”

“Yes! I'll draw the map.”

It got drawn on the back of a flowered napkin off the art shelf. Then it went up on the board, and another one wrote TREASURE MAB underneath it.

“You write well,” said Teacher Yubok. “Shall we change that B into a P?”

The P went on. And then the hunting started.

What kept it going The tent kept coming down until there was something else to fold. And after that nothing arrived as an instruction — a map might be good, what do you think? That B, shall we change it?

It's not like it is on the wall

The dark came first — a tent in the corner the sun does not reach, and a dark scarf hung over the side where the light still got in.

Then the torch projectors went in, and the films with them.

An animal came up on the tent wall and somebody named it. The film got changed and a plant came up. Then a sum, worked out from the floor.

Then the complaints started, and they were specific.

The light was not bright enough. A brighter projector would be better than this one.

And the picture was wrong. Not blurry. The shape of it.

“It's not like it is on the wall.”

The classroom wall is flat. The tent was a round one.