That's What I Get For Having An Agenda

I'm coming to understand that an outdoor classroom needs just as much fluffing as an indoor one or things get stale. In that spirit I mixed things up on Monday, closing down the water pump in the sand pit and replacing it with this:

The pictures are dark because I took them early, before the sun had touched our courtyard, but you get the idea. We don't really provide a ton of climbing opportunities for kids on a daily basis, so I like the idea of creating these oddball physical challenges. I thought the set up had maze-like qualities. You could cross the first plank then decide whether to go straight ahead, turn right along the stumps, or attempt a diagonal route via the milk crate. The fabric would create a gauzy effect of some sort. Pretty sweet actually.

I then moved our water play into the "bulls eye" of the outdoor space, positioning our magnificent sensory table, with water and squeeze bottles of various descriptions.

I later tossed in a few large syringes, thinking that this would make a perfect free-form lesson in hydraulics (lots of squirting) and social skills (lots of reminders that we don't squirt other people unless they say it's okay). 

I made changes in the garden and Little World as well.

I am brilliant.

Right away, that tire I'd buried caused irritation. Both Max and Thomas (long time Woodland Park students) tried to yank it out of the ground grumbling that it was in their way. I don't think anyone climbed on it.

Then a gang of kids went to work shoveling sand onto the upper plank walkway, which was already a bit slippery, making it impassable.

They then unscrewed all the tops from the squirt bottles, rendering them mere bottles, and proceeded to transport the water from the sensory table, bottle by bottle, to the sand bestrewn plank, where they used the water to "wash it off." At the same time other kids were piling new sand on the plank.

I told them about the myth of Sisyphus, doomed to an eternity of bearing his boulder to the top of the mountain, only to have it roll back down, but they weren't particularly impressed.

Meanwhile, children attempted to hang their full weight on the decorative gauzy fabric.

I later uncovered the syringes buried as a cache under the sand, the ladder was overturned, the milk crates were re-purposed, and the squirt bottle lids went missing only to be discovered yesterday in the basket that hangs from the business end of this series of pulleys:

Clearly, I have no idea how to play and must be, once again, schooled in my own school.