Once, but no matter when, I was working in an awesome kindy. All the teachers were risk takers in their field. We had a spot called ‘feral hill’. Feral hill looked like a junk yard hidden in the bush. Many a kid was warned by their parents at drop off time to “Try and stay away from feral hill today”, (Just a vain desperate attempt to save their washing machines). After a day playing on feral hill everybody was knacked. Feral hill was a place of abundant action. In 2014 I created a mobile version of Feral Hill, and called it Mobile Junk and Nature Playground.
Check out these photos of the real feral hill.
This pile of junk and nature was a turbo powered jet car. The two barrels at the back were humongous jet engines. In the middle, made of sticks and log slices (Flintstone car style) you can see a steering wheel. Also in the front a thick log is wedged in a hollow log, creating axle and wheel, while the cars right wheel has fallen off due to too much speed.
Kid made cubbys would spring up all over the shot. Nearly every kid at the kindy experienced the timber embrace of a blue gum on the back of the head. They developed a person investment in conquering the stick design needed to stop head eggs.
Their cubbies got more and more complex, and purposeful. They were no longer ‘cubby houses. Now they were Pet shops, Dog grooming businesses, Crocodile traps, Haunted houses, and on and on and on and on. And of course they were always developing novel ways to stop sticks falling on their heads.
The Mobile junk and nature playground experience is a ‘time/space trip’ to feral hill. For 90 minutes, I bring a ute full of resources (11 full 200 litre barrels of loose parts goodies) to your early childhood site.
What happens at a Mobile Junk and nature playground session? Kids build. They build cubbies, nuclear power stations, dams, traps, monster trucks, and millipede zoos. Whatever their brains can consider, they create.
They create, and explore new technologies, like, mud as cement, barrels as structural supports, and knots.
They dip their toes into the waters of literacy.
They symbolically represent their world around them.
But more importantly, they connect with the nature around them. They find bones, seed pods, earwigs, and spiders. They watch the clouds, and sense the wind. They notice the birds and can see bird language. For some in-depth learning reflections of a mobile junk and nature playground session click this link MJNP learning reflections
To book a session, or find out more click here.