When they can't be gentle

Play tents

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.

Balloons

So it was feet after that

One of them was patting a balloon and watching it come back down, and laughing every time it did.

The one watching copied it with a ball instead, throwing that up and up again.

Then a balloon went pop underneath the throwing.

“Balloons are soft, so if you hold one too tight it goes bang.”

That got a nod, and a new balloon.

And the new balloon did not get thrown. It got kicked — a proper one, with the sound to go with it.

Everybody else stopped throwing and started kicking too, so a goal and a bouncy ball came out to go with the feet.

Magnifying glasses

It can feel that too

The walk stopped when one of them sat down on the path to look at ants.

They moved somewhere safer for it, and the magnifying glasses came out for the ants and for a woodlouse, and the woodlouse came up onto a palm to be looked at properly.

Then a finger came down on it and pressed.

“That hurts it. It can feel it, the same as we can.”

Teacher Yepark showed how to touch one — the very tip of a finger, barely.

After that the woodlouse got touched like that, and then not touched at all, just watched while it moved.

Seaweed

Sorry, sorry

The first thing anybody said about the dry seaweed was that it was hard.

“It's hard. Teacher, what is this?”

“It is hard,” said Teacher Yepark. “It's pointy. It hurts if it pokes you.”

Then it went into an empty bottle, piece after piece, until the bottle was full. And then the bottle got turned upside down and shaken.

It all came out at once.

Some of it went across the face and the hands of the child sitting alongside.

“Ow! It's prickly!”

Bori's face went down. Then, straight away:

“Sorry.”

And a hand went up and down that child's arm, the way somebody does it for you.

What kept it going Nobody had to tell Bori to say it. The prickly part had been said out loud already, before anybody got poked with it.

Water guns

I'll give it water gently

Outside with the water guns, they went looking for what needed water.

The ground had dried out in the sun, so they sprayed it.

“The ground got cool.”

Then the vegetable patch, and the tomatoes and the peppers.

“This one got so big.”

“There are flowers too.”

Then Chaewon found an earthworm drying out in the sunlight, and stopped.

“Don't be hurt.”

“I'll give it water gently.”

The spray came out short and soft — barely a press at all.

Water guns

Feet first, or it startles you

An inflatable pool and a slide had gone up out front. They watched it through the window on the way in.

Teacher Yubok asked what the rules should be for playing in it safely.

“You go up the slide from the going-up side.”

“You don't spray water in your friend's face.”

The pools were different depths, and they each chose.

“I'm playing in the shallow one.”

“This water gun is the one that shoots really well!”

And walking out, the rules kept coming — and these ones nobody had asked for.

“If you get water on someone's head all at once it startles them, so you have to do feet first!”

“Don't shoot my face.”

What kept it going The rules came out of them, not at them. Teacher Yubok asked first, and by the time they were outside they were telling each other.