We need a bigger hole!

Well it's been a busy first week back and after home visits and our older children returning on tueday some of our new children started today. As is often the case we had a few children anxious about staying without Mummy or Daddy so we had ready, the trusty marble run, made by a lovely parent years ago, well before I started here seven years ago. This simple object never fails to calm and capture a child's focus. There is something hypnotic and reassuring about the repetetive action of putting the marbles into the top and watching them make their zig-zagging way down before catching them with a satisfying plop in a small tub and starting all over again.

As a small group of children were engaged with this, one child put a large marble down. It's always interesting to see what happens next so I always leave the big marbles in the tin. The children were mainly concerned that their marbles couldn't go down and the child who had put the big marble down just put another and another. I sat back and watched. A child who had been watching piped up 'We need a bigger hole'. This was a child who had just started with us, already thinking creatively and problem solving. 'I think I might know where we can find a bigger hole' I said and went and found the long box we use for shooting cars down [an idea from Sand and Water Tables blog so thanks for that]. Eventually the children will think like this for themselves but in these early days we scaffold their play a little bit more. Then of course the cars came out and all sorts of other things were tried out down the shute. Lots of exclamations of 'yes' 'we did it' and 'this is fun', 'oh no, it didn't go down' were overheard many times.

The shute inspired by Sand and Water Tables blog

With the trusty marble run