Play tents · Building bricks · Soft animals · Magnifying glasses · Socks · Baby dolls
Play tents
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.
One of them had laid the magnetic tiles out along the floor into a road, and pointed at it.
“You've made a road. Shall we go across it together?”
The answer was no. That one wanted to do it alone.
So Bori, who had not got into the brick game either, took the magnetic tiles that were left and started stacking instead — the square ones, one on another, up.
When it was high, Bori clapped.
Then the others came over to see, and stayed, and the stacking turned into making shapes.
A small brick figure arrived from somewhere and got put inside one of the shapes.
It had got warm enough for short sleeves. Spring must be here, then. They named frogs and butterflies and bees, jumping on the spot and waving their arms up and down to be them.
So out they went to find the real ones. They were climbing up on high rocks and pushing their hands into the grass — so the magnifying glasses came out, to see from further off without getting hurt.
One of them did not want insects coming near at all. With a glass, that one went round looking at things too.
There were bees at the blossom, but nothing else turned up, and they minded that.
Back inside they talked about what the bees had been like. Scary, they said, but small, and kind of cute — and next time they wanted to see a butterfly.
Then they started laying wooden blocks end to end, making a road so the insects could come and find them.
What kept it going Teacher Yubok handed the glasses out to keep hands out of the grass. What they also did was give the one who wanted nothing near them a way to look — from as far back as they liked.
The blocks went down as a path, and as stepping stones, to be walked along.
Some walked it. Some wanted a hand. One would not get onto it at all.
So that one rolled a car along the top of it instead.
Then walked an animal along it, held in one hand, the whole way across.
That was the part they wanted, and they went back to it, and back again.
What kept it going The block path was too high for one of them, and nobody got lifted onto it. The animal went across in a hand instead, and the crossing got done that way.
Teacher Yepark tied a line across the room — one end on the bathroom door handle, the other through the hole in the blanket cupboard door.
Then their own socks went up on it with clothespins, one at a time.
They came for them. Reaching, pulling, and one of them clapping after getting a sock down alone. Bori pointed out which one was Bori's.
One child was watching the clothespins instead of the socks, so a clothespin went into that child's hand, and the work began on getting its mouth open.
The ones who could not stand steadily enough got picked up to the line.
Bori held a sock against a foot.
“That's right — socks go on feet.”
So it went onto the foot, loosely, and got pulled off again.
Then somebody arrived with a dog puppet and wanted the dog up there too. The dog went up. A frog went up after it.
And for the ones who were sitting on the floor and could not reach any of it, scarves went up — hanging low, down in the sitting-down world, near enough to grab, and to pull, and to put a face behind.
What kept it going The line was strung where the standing children could reach it. Teacher Yepark hung the scarves off it lower down, so the ones still on the floor had something of their own to pull, and that is where the peekaboo started.
While the others were putting medicine on the doll and feeding it, one of them stayed out of all that and built a robot out of blocks instead.
“What if you made the baby a toy, out of your blocks?”
“All right.”
“What sort of toy would the baby like?”
“A gun.”
“Make the baby a gun, then.”
A small one came back, held up to be looked at.
“Show the baby.”
That one went and put it down on the floor next to the others.
“I made a gun.”
The others took it and set it beside the doll — and then they all wanted one.
“I need one too.”
So two more came, exactly the same as the first, handed over one at a time.
What kept it going Teacher Yepark did not ask them over to the dolls. She asked what the baby would like, took the answer that came — a gun — and left it uncorrected. What crossed the room to the others was made of their own blocks, from where they were already sitting.
Under 3noticing other childrencommunicationpretend play