Rockets

For many years there had been rockets in the playroom.  I don’t think I have ever had an actual toy rocket but the children have built rockets to play with.  Their preferred rocket building materials don’t come from the block bin.  They use items from the housekeeping area.

There hasn’t been any ‘rocket’ play for the past year so I looked for an old picture of the children engaged in this activity.  I have nearly 4500 childcare photos on my computer so this proved to be a time consuming task.  The only one I could find before I gave up was this one;

 

Sorry, it is not a very good quality photo – to get it I cropped a small section of a larger photo.  I don’t actually think they are using it as a rocket in this photo, it seems to be a shaker of something that they are adding to a recipe.  However, they do have the cups placed on the bottle that I wanted to show you.  Here is a picture I just took of the ‘supplies’.

I don’t remember which child originally discovered that those cups fit perfectly on those bottles – it was so very long ago.  It has been an ongoing activity passed on through several groups of children over the years.  There has always been one problem and you might be able to guess it if you look at the above photo (hint: how many cups vs how many bottles).

If only one child was playing then all three cups would be put on one bottle – like the shaker in the first photo.  If two (or more) children wanted to play and have ‘rocket races’ then this would happen;

Seriously, they would never agree to only use one cup on each bottle and put the third cup away.   There was always one rocket that was bigger, and more powerful, that the other.  Some days I dreaded the rocket races.

The rocket play has fizzled out over the last year.  The older children have not passed the game on to the young group I currently have.  Yet, earlier this week the baby of the group did something that was very, very interesting.  Take a look;

I didn’t manage to get them all in the photo but there are three of those milk jugs.  Three jugs, three cups, three rockets that have yet to lift off.  Impressive.  The others haven’t noticed yet, but there are four toddlers….

Retail Drama

Many, many years ago the playroom was much different than it is today.  I used to have several large plastic toys – all in one themed activity centres manufactured by various toy companies.  Certainly these types of items serve a purpose – many of the ones I had were originally purchased for my own children and they enjoyed using them.

These moulded plastic toys had no sharp edges, were easy to clean, and light enough to be easily moved around – or tipped over.  One of the main problems that I had with these toys was that they were bulky and used up a considerable amount of space.  I couldn’t have them all out at the same time so, like the bins of small toys, I also rotated the large toys available.  Unlike the bins of small toys it was not easy to take one out and replace it with another.  Usually changing the big toys required rearranging the whole room – a task that sometimes took nearly as much time as the creating the built-in play space that I have now.

It was the mixture of bright colors of the plastic toys that bothered me most.  With several large pieces and many bins of small toys the playroom ‘screamed.’  Using wood and natural products to create built in play equipment has allowed me to use more neutral, calmer colors.  Also, much of the space now serves multiple purposes – is open ended – to allow more imaginative play than the themed plastic equipment.

One item that I miss from the ‘old days’ is the storefront.  I’m glad the shocking purple, orange and lime green are gone and the shelves were easy to replace but the cash register was another story.  I have searched catalogues, toy stores, and thrift shops for something that is or could be a cash register.  I’ve found some but they’ve been poorly constructed, too expensive, too large or too small or not appropriate for use by young children.

Now, not having a cash register doesn’t mean the children don’t play games that involve going to the store or shopping but I miss the cash register.  I’ve had a solar powered calculator in the play space which has been popular for many uses including a cash register but it is small.  The children have decided the large base for one of the old cordless phones is a ‘computer’ – it has a small screen and a keypad and has also been used as a cash register.  I rescued an old computer keyboard that my husband was going to throw out, removed the cord and put it in the playroom.  This has become the control panel for a space ship, the emergency command centre and — a cash register.  Now the children have added a ‘scanner’ (wrench with sound effects) to the cash register too – they scan items others choose to buy.

Sometimes even I forget the power of imagination and symbolic play.  No one walks into the playroom and says “Cool, you’ve got a cash register” like they do with the double door refrigerator but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a real working cash register.