posts tagged with 'play'
water power
Sometimes I wish I lived somewhere where it stayed cold enough all winter that the annual ice breakup in the spring was something people would pay attention to. But there are joys to be found in the crazy up-and-down temperatures of Massachusetts February too. Yesterday morning we took a walk in Lowell in the balmy springlike air, and it was delightfully strange to be wishing I had shorts on while looking down at the ice on the Pawtucket Canal. There was no ice on the Merrimack River, though: any pieces that haven't melted yet have to be all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean by now. There is some flow on that river!
spring tide
It was actually pretty scary standing on that catwalk watching the water roaring under our feet. We don't do a lot of things that would result in near-certain death in case of a slip, but this felt like one of them. I asked the kids how many gallons of water they thought were passing over the dam every second, but it wasn't really a fair question: how could we hope to make any sort of estimate?! (after some research this morning this site suggests it was in the neighborhood of 150,000 gallons per second).
In the afternoon the water at Freeman pond was powerful and dangerous in a different way. There was four to six feet of open water between the shore and the ice, sparkling in the sunshine and rippled with little waves that were well-nigh irresistible to lots of us there. But cold! Because it was ice water. So nobody did more than wading, unless you count the toddler who fell in completely. Harvey challenged all comers to see if anyone could stand in the water longer than him; nobody could, though two people battled him to a bitter (numb) draw. And Zion, Elijah, and a friend made their way on to the ice and ran around on it in their bare feet until I yelled at them to get off. Good times!
wade in the water
Now today it's back to winter and there's a winter storm warning in effect for tomorrow. Seven to twelve inches of snow forecast. That's fine: we get another day of sledding, and then it all turns into even more water. Spring is coming!
the best park
There are lots of parks and woodlands around eastern Massachusetts; we're really blessed. But maybe none of them have as much concentrated fun as Menotomy Rocks Park, where we spent Saturday morning. We were there because I was co-hosting a playtime gathering for church families, since we hadn't met in person for over a month. It was a tough sell with the chilly weather and there were only a few kids, but that was fine because we had an amazing time anyways!
What makes the park so great is that, in a tiny area compared to some of the woods we frequent, it has a pond, a couple of fields, a playground, and steep hills with lots of paths and lots of rocks. And I think our group made good use of all of them! Sledding was the main attraction: there was just one narrow slope, but it was fast and steep and plenty of fun to keep kids coming back for lots of runs (and without serious injury too, though there were definitely some scary and tearful moments!). The snow surface was amazing over the weekend: compacted frozen snow with a dusting of sleet and then powder on top of it, which left the world looking like a winter wonderland, but one you could walk on top of without sinking in. The best of all worlds! And so great for sledding that you almost didn't need a sled.
We really put that to the test, too, when towards the end of the morning we ventured into the woods a bit to climb some rocks. After we summited successfully I suggested, kind of as a joke, that we slide down a snowy chute between the rocks and see what happened... and then of course I had to actually try it! Then so did the kids. At that point I kind of wished I wasn't, technically, leading a church group, since what we were doing wasn't what you'd call safe. Luckily I was the only one to get badly hurt!
just a small portion of the slide route
Besides all that sliding, there was also playing on the playground and by the creek, some bold crossings of the frozen pond, and lots of good adult conversation. No snowmen or snowball fights though: you couldn't pick up that snow without a jackhammer! I can see why the homeschool coop that met there a few years ago was a great success. I only wish it were closer to home!
slipping and sliding
It's cooled down now, but the end of last week through the weekend it was terrible hot. Monday too, so for our first day of summer school (camp? not-school? what do we call it when we celebrate the end of school but then keep meeting on the same schedule?) the kids came prepared to get wet. But how much fun could we have with just the hose? Quite a lot, it turns out.
thrilling!
It was a bit of a process to come up with that setup, and really the kids should get all the credit. I resisted the ladder on safety grounds, and I resisted the tarp because I thought it would be a pain to dry and put away after. But both worked fantastic, as long as we had at least one person holding up the ladder. Zion and Elijah even tried a few runs head-first, despite the kind of tough drop at the bottom of the slide. And nobody died!
one of many sucessful runs
As cool as that was, it wasn't even the best waterslide experience of the past couple days. As I hinted at yesterday, the boys and their friends—or, to be precise, Zion and his friend—discovered that the algae on the spillway at Estabrook Town Forest makes it very slippery indeed. At first they were just sliding down on their bare feet, but that was of course kind of risky: even though the water over the spillway was only a couple inches deep and the pool at the bottom not more than 18 it was inevitable that before too long they'd fall and get wet. So they made sure that wasn't an issue by just jumping right in!
the photo fails to capture the sense of speed
(That also reduced the risk of head injuries from falling backwards, which I appreciated.)
The slide kept the kids entertained for well over half an hour, and they would have stayed even longer if we had let them. And it was hot enough that they didn't mind being wet for the rest of the walk and the car ride home. Who needs to pay big money to a waterpark to have all kinds of wet slidey fun?!
little adventures
As I was thinking about plans for the week back on Sunday I was reflecting on how much easier outings used to be when the boys were little. How many times did we just walk down to the stream a quarter mile away and watch the water for an hour or so? And then of course there were all the hours we spent at the playground, or just walking and scootering to the center of town and back with the dog (remember when we just had one dog? the picture on the masthead does!). Now I feel like we've got to do something epic every time we leave the house, something befitting my crew of intrepid hikers and cyclists: visit somewhere we've never been before, or at least some woods that feel big enough to do some real exploring. All that time in the car! Well, maybe I actually don't really need to lead grand adventures; even for eleven-, ten-, and seven-year-olds small adventures can be pretty fun too. That's what I learned when I tried it today and got them all up and out for a picnic at the playground.
just like old times
We headed up after they finished up their weekly book group at 11. Our first stop was the skate park, where Harvey and Zion rode the obstacles in a relaxed manner and Lijah and I pushed ourselves (only I got badly hurt). Then we ate lunch, luxuriating in the beautiful cool late-spring air (or in one case being cold). Then we played tag in the field and tag on the playground, and when Zion tagged Lijah into a fence stanchion we took a break from that and Harvey and Zion timed each other doing climbing challenges. Then we went home. We could have stayed longer, too, but there was another Zoom class to attend. That's something that's different from four years ago, and sometimes I wish it wasn't. Another difference is that the boys are all much better cyclists (or cyclists at all!) so we only needed to budget ten minutes for the trip home, and I don't think it even took that. It would have been 25 in the old days. Maybe these days are the best of all worlds!
everyday outings again?
It's been a long time since we went on an outing that wasn't an adventure in the great outdoors. In former days we used to go shopping, visit playgrounds, and spend lots of time at the library. Oh the library! How we miss it! Well, the library is still closed but the playground has reopened, and kids aren't barred from stores any longer, so yesterday we took a trip to the center of town just like old times. One difference, of course, was that Elijah rode his own bike: up the hill for the first time! We played on the playground for good long time before doing a little shopping at Whole Foods and Marshalls (for shorts: two out of three boys had holes in the ones they were wearing on the trip). When we got back Mama asked the kids what it was like going into a store for the first time in four months; pretty much regular, they said. It still feels kind of like a milestone.
Another milestone was returning (almost) the last of the library books we checked out back in March. While they're not letting us in, the library is now open for curbside pickup, so the book drop is back in action as well and they're sending us overdue notices for the books we've had for four months. It felt strange looking through them as we bagged them up to take back: we've read some of them so many times it felt like we owned them, while others, read once back in March, reminded us of how much time has passed since all this started. We used to go to the library at least once every week, often twice! We miss it. I'm psyching myself up to use the online catalogue and put in an order for pickup, but that's just not how I want to find books. We really want is to be able to browse the shelves again! The town just cancelled all town activities through the end of the year, so it doesn't look good for that. We're ready when they are.
agglutinative character creation in imaginative play
Another post about Lijah, since I get to spend so much time with him these days. He likes to play imaginative games with us—well, sort of imaginative. Mostly it's about deciding what character he wants to be, and then announcing it repeatedly. For a while it was pretty simple: a cat, or a pirate, or spiderman (in rough chronological order). But then he started to get a little more baroque. For example, on the playground the other day he and I (with a little assistance from Zion) played a rousing game of robot pirate bugs.
Then yesterday it got even more confusing, when he decided he was a robot dinosaur pirate baby. I said I could be the mama, so after a little while—and I should reiterate just how many times he announces what he is, to the point that it forms at least fifty percent of the play dialogue—he said something like, "ok, I'm the baby robot dinosaur pirate baby and you're the mama robot dinosaur pirate baby." I guess it makes sense at some level, and I was happy to roll with it for a minute or two until he changed me into something else. I can't wait until he's writing stories down someday...
playing dirty
The first heat wave of the summer has struck (that one in February didn't count) and we're responding with less clothes and more dirt.
a pause to pose
Besides enjoying our sandbox and hose-derived mud, the boys spent an hour or two yesterday evening playing at their friends' house across the street. They just finished up a renovation and still have two good-sized dirt piles just crying out to be climbed. While the bigger kids amused themselves with ball and imaginative games, Lijah just grabbed a hoe to use as an ice-ax and headed up one of the mountains... again and again and again. I made sure he had a nice bath.
Today the baths are already over with, after an even sweatier day hiking in the woods and walking around town, but with the heat fading a little bit in the twilight the kids are all back out in the dirt. Oh well, the bedding will wash. And though they do clean up alright, they're pretty cute dirty as well!
showing his work
my favorite space
I know I've mentioned it before, but since we spent some time last week playing in the Discovery Woods part of the Discovery Museum, I wanted once again to write about how much I love it.
naturally lovely
We visited on a chilly wet day, with rain and snow falling intermixed, and the main part of the museum was pretty crowded. But when we headed over to the Woods area, we found that we had it all to ourselves. Maybe the closed doors on the house building kept folks away; maybe it was the fact that, when we went inside, the cold air seeping up through the gaps in the floorboards made it just as chilly inside as out. But it was significantly drier! And I don't know how anyone could resist a place like this.
I guess you could call it a treehouse...
Never mind the fact that we could see our breath, the warm materials and clever design made the space feel wonderfully welcoming. We built block towers, played hide-and-seek, and experimented with the periscopes. Then the boys cuddled under the pile of sleeping bags someone had so kindly left in a corner while I read them a story.
so much to see and do
In my mental "ideas book" for our current and future home improvement projects, this space is right there on the cover. We're a little sad to hear that the management will soon be closing the original, iconic victorian house that currently holds the "Children's" part of the museum, and building a new structure to house the same sorts of exhibits; but given how perfect a job they did on Discovery Woods I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.
visiting Danahy Park
Last week my parents were out of town, so on Wednesday instead of going to their house the boys came in to work with us. Leah took them to a friend's house nearby in the morning, then we had lunch together, and then it was my turn to watch them while she worked. The first thing I did was make them do some schoolwork (because it's still October—and I needed to finish up a couple things myself). But then we headed out into the beautiful fall day to explore new playgrounds.
urban oasis
Danahy Park is right around the corner from our church and workplace, but it's still not the closest playground, so the boys had never been before. At first sight they were unimpressed with the play structure, but delighted by the grassy expanse. It made them want to play golf.
lots of room to run
Besides the grass there are also a few woodsy and marshy nooks, so it feels like a place you want to explore. And explore we did!
wilderness
When I got tired of managing the pace disparity between Lijah and the other boys I shepherded them over to the play structure, where they managed to find things to do after all—especially when they let themselves be engaged by a braggy four-year-old who wanted someone to play with. Then school let out and the crowd got a little overwhelming; but it was fun to watch all those kids show off their complete comfort with the playground they visit every day. We might go again sometime too.
play spaces
There's a new indoor play-space that opened up last week around the corner from us. It's attached to a toy store and has all kinds of props for playing house or store, and building toys, and a gym to run around in. But as great as it is, it's still only the second-best play area we've explored in the past week. Because the Discovery Museum in Acton finished up their new addition.
delightful
We love the museum, and have spent many happy hours there (for example). That said, Harvey's getting a little old for the "Childrens" section—the fun runs out a little quicker than it used to.
not enthused
And the big-kid science discovery portion doesn't open until afternoon. So we thought we'd check out the new addition, for which we had no expectations at all. It is amazing.
The centerpiece is a "treehouse" suspended a story above the ground and reachable by wooden bridges. Inside the barn-like structure is the most beautiful all-natural waldorffy space I've ever experienced, warmed by sawn-board walls and light streaming through the mismatched collection of windows. Neither words nor pictures can do it justice—especially after 9:00—but I try.
I want to live there
Every aspect of the space was so delightful—the tables, the natural-wood blocks, the rag rugs, the tree limbs used as structural elements—I didn't want to leave. When the boys and their friends finally dragged me out I found that the exterior space is just as charming, filled with lots of the same attractions that we love at the Kemp Playground, but even better for being basically in the woods.
one of many other amusements
There's a bouncy bridge, blocks big enough to build a house you can fit in, a web to climb on, hula hoops, swing, balance-beam trees... and if that's not enough to interest the bigger kids signs point the way towards a 2-mile loop you can hike through the adjacent woods.
I'm pretty much in love. Hopefully we'll be able to find time to go back soon.