Imaginative play doesn’t need to be fancy, expensive or difficult to set up!

The discount shops are great for buying basic props very cheaply.

Here we have some quite large plastic insects which the children really enjoy playing with. 

They are a great size …

and they look so life like!

By making available natural materials like a variety of logs, pebbles, rocks and plants, imaginative play simply takes off!

With the addition of earthy coloured fabrics, the environment looks very effective and to the children it is irresistible fun!

One day one of the children brought in a case moth he had found in his garden.

He had been following this little creature around his garden for about a week, finding it in a different place each day.  The children were totally fascinated by the way it crawled around carrying its home along with it as it looked for food.

We explained to the children that the process a caterpillar goes through to become a moth or butterfly is called metamorphosis and we used the story of The very hungry caterpillar to explain it in a language they could understand. The very ordinary caterpillar is another lovely book they enjoyed.

They also had a great time acting out the story with The very hungry caterpillar felt board.

Metamorphosis is a fascinating concept for children so we pulled out a couple of metamorphosis puzzles on the life cycles of the butterfly and the frog.

In keeping with the tadpole / frog interest we are currently experiencing at kinder we set up a frog bog using lots of natural materials, frogs (the odd crocodile or two …  naturally) and our frog metamorphosis set.

Including materials like rocks and logs from our garden the water soon resembled a muddy frog bog. It was spectacular!

We have a wonderful frogbog CD which we played (hidden behind a fern) in the background, which made the play space sound and feel like we really were exploring a natural frog bog.

This CD doesn’t contain music just incredible Australian frog calls. It’s so amazing and the children were fascinated by the sounds real frogs make….not one single gribbet to be heard let alone a gulumph!

We have a great song we taught the children about metamorphosis and Sherry made some fabulous prop cards which the children use to act out the song.

Here are the words to the song – METAMORPHOSIS

Kittens look like cats,

and puppies look like dogs,

so why don’t little tadpoles, look like little frogs.

Bear cubs look like bears,

and little sloths like sloths,

so why don’t caterpillars look like little moths.

Kittens, puppies and other things don’t need a special process.

But caterpillars and tadpoles do.

They go through MET – A – MOR – PHO – SIS!

PS. The case moth was returned to the garden and a few weeks later our young friend discovered the empty case … how wonderful!

You can see some amazing photos of case moths and other incredible insects  through our ‘Moths & Butterflies‘ link.

We use these small wooden logs in a lot of our imaginary play.  They are thickish branches cut into different sizes.

Here we have used them with some gorgeous owls which Donna made.

We also added some old bird nests which Sherry had brought in, along with other natural materials.

The tiny owls are simply from a game we had in the cupboard.

Due to all the lovely rain we have experienced in Melbourne this week the children have had the most wonderful time playing in the soft damp, rich soil in an empty garden box in our playground. Apart from having awesome fun in the mud it has provided some much needed toiling to the soil, great preparation before we plant it out with spring flowers and vegies.

The children had the best time digging, mixing, pouring and scooping the wet and sloppy concoction of dirt, sand, tanbark, stones and herbs from our herb garden. All working together to create volume, several different projects were on the go at once.

Some children cooked up batches of stone soup and mud pies, delicious!

While others made cement to build a castle out of bricks and logs.

Another group of children created a dinosaur swamp …

… later turning it in to dinosaur stew … munchy, crunchy for my lunchy!

Working co-operatively together, the play went on all morning.

One of our dads who was helping out for the morning wasn’t too sure the parents would be overly thrilled with our mud patch fun, which as teachers we have all heard before. It’s sad, but all too often when parents say good bye to their children, they follow it up with “Have fun, I’ll see you later…. oh and try not to get dirty”. But you know what? Some of them did get dirty.  Actually some of them got really dirty!

They were having so much fun co-operating, communicating, socializing, enjoying, sharing, problem solving, discovering, laughing, experimenting, building, sampling, exercising, negotiating, imagining, believing and yes, getting a little dirty in the process.

Learning life skills in a mud patch.  How wonderfully perfect! 

Later in the morning, when the mud had dried and been washed from hands and brushed from pants and boots, we brought out the book “Wombat Stew”, a delightful story about a clever Australian dingo who catches a fat wombat he plans to cook up for his dinner. The wombat’s bush animal friends come to his rescue and sabotage the dingo’s plans by offering some very bad advice on how to make the stew more delicious. The dingo believes he has been poisoned by the terrible stew and runs away never to be seen again.

The story delighted the children and they laughed and chuckled their way through the  book as they loudly and proudly declared at the end, that their dinosaur stew was much more disgusting than the not so clever dingo’s wombat stew!

…oohey, gooey, yummy, chewy wombat dinosaur stew…