I love open-ended materials that are beautiful, natural and lend themselves to all sorts of imaginative, creative and interesting play. I have hollow wooden blocks which get a lot of use and I would like to develop the use of these materials. I planned to add driftwood to the block play a long time ago and looked every time we went to the beach but came up with very little that was useful - so I sourced some from good old eBay and was delighted with what arrived!
We had an exciting time unpacking 8 kilogrammes of driftwood that arrived by courier - we were all enthralled by the different sizes, shapes, textures and patterns of the pieces of wood and we told each other the stories of where they came from - this one held a door lock that locked a princess in a tower........ this one was the top of a table that a family sat around and ate their dinner....... this one was the handle of a spade that dug a vegetable garden like ours..... this one came from a tiny fishing boat eaten by a whale........ it was wonderful to hear the imagination flow!
Many of the pieces had holes in them that intrigued Faith!
I had carefully picked out boxes that had different types of wood - and Faith noticed this - she started to classify them into baskets and it threw up some interesting questions of how to sort them - she decided in the end on five groups - long and flat, chunky, wood wormy, twisty and little pieces. Many of the pieces fitted more than one category - long and flat but riddled with worm holes, or a little piece, but it twisted - I was fascinated watching her work through the wood.....
Here are her efforts about half way through!
It didn't take long for our resident explorer to notice that something new and unusual had arrived and he scooted on over to join in the action!
And what was Eve doing all this time? She was cutting holes in the cardboard box to make a lion's den - there's always one that plays with the packaging isn't there???!!!!
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