playground games
Almost every night, after Bao goes to bed, I have a special snuggle with The Bun. We lie in the darkness and whisper 'what are you thinking about?' Often it's a review of the nice things that happened that day, sometimes we discuss things that are going to happen, sometimes he tells me what he wants in his lunchbox, and a lot of the time he tells me about what happened in school that day.
It's one of the best ways to get an insight into what his friendships are like. From what I gather, he mostly plays with the same gang of boys and the occasional girl who joins in their games. I discovered a few months ago that many of the children had met beforehand in the summer before school started last year. As a result, a lot of them already knew each other when school started and in that way The Bun was late on the social front when he joined the class. This year there are seven new kids in his class, and predictably the cliques have formed - the 'old gang' who were all in Reception together last year, and the 'new kids'. From what I hear, the new girls have integrated better into the class than the new boys. I can tell that The Bun enjoys a sense of belonging with his group of friends, even though, being kids (and being boys) all the friendships amongst his group comes with a fair share of fighting, name-calling, and switching best friends on a regular basis.
There are two scheduled playtimes in school: one during the mid-morning break (snack time), and one after lunch. Unless it is raining or snowing heavily, all the kids are sent outside to play. There are a couple of teachers who supervise the danger zones, like the areas near the carpark and the forest, but otherwise the children are left to play on their own and sort out their own conflicts. There is a large, open, concrete playground area outside the school buildings, a wooded area for digging and climbing in (The Bun's favourite place), a climbing frame with slides, and a large football pitch. No students are permitted inside the classroom buildings during playtime unless they are with a teacher or an adult. If the weather is bad, the kids have what is called 'wet play', which means they stay in their classrooms and play with the toys there. From what The Bun tells me, sometimes during wet play everything gets so chaotic inside that the teachers simply put on some cartoons on the whiteboard to get some peace and quiet. They mostly watch Charlie and Lola, Peppa Pig and Numberjacks. I like knowing that even teachers aren't above using an electronic babysitter sometimes.
Swinging at the football pitch
These are some of the games that The Bun plays in school (the names of the games as told to me):
~ Potions: this involves a lot of digging around in the soil and mixing in dead leaves, twigs and pebbles so that it forms a 'potion'. There is a natural spring in the school field that flows continuously, and everyone goes to it for a drink of water. The Bun told me that they get the water from the spring to make the soil wet and muddy. When I asked him how they got the water from the spring to the potion 'pot', he told me they used their mouths! The boys would take huge mouthfuls of water and run back and forth from the spring to spit the water out into the potion they were mixing. Ew. After the potion is completed, they use twigs, leaves, and their hands (double ew) to spread the mixture all over the tree trunks and roots, because apparently it 'helps the trees grow better'.
~ Fossil hunters: plenty of scrabbling around in the gravel and soil looking for fossils and interesting rocks. The Bun's Reception teacher last year jokingly complained that The Bun kept dragging in all sorts of muddy rocks into the classroom to present to her. Now that The Bun is obsessed with geology, his rock collecting mania has more than doubled. Today he came home with a rock that was somehow broken in two. He and another boy had managed to break it in half by throwing it around because they wanted to look for crystals and gems inside. The Bun is fascinated by geodes (hollow rocks with crystal and mineral deposits inside) and thinks that all rocks are potential geodes even though I keep reminding him that most geodes are found in volcanic regions or caves.
~ Catch the Squidgies: 'squidgies' is the word the children in school use to call firebugs, a small, harmless red-and-black bug that can be found all over the grassy areas in the warmer months. The kids catch them and try to see who can have the most bugs crawl up and down their arms. The Bun says that they have been told not to 'squidge' the bugs, so after playing with them, the kids just flick them back into the grass and the poor bugs live to see another day.
Firebugs getting their er, thing on
~ Spying on [name]: a variation of the police-and-thief game. A group of detectives have to hunt down the 'baddie' and put him in prison (the steps outside the school office). Sometimes the baddie has 'very strong arms' and can break open the prison walls to escape. They apparently take it in turns to be the baddie but The Bun tells me he always refuses! I'll let him figure out the implications of that on his own.
~ Shop: the girls set up shop on one of the benches in the playground and make things to sell using dead leaves, pebbles, and flowers. Sometimes these represent jewellery, sometimes sweets. The Bun and some other kids pretend that they are customers. I'm not quite sure what they use as currency though.
~ Star Wars X-Fighter: lots of chasing each other trying to shoot the other down.
~ Kissy Time: The Bun came home one day and laughed as he told us that when his friend N shouts 'kissy time!' all the boys and girls chase each other and try to kiss each other on the lips. He demonstrated on me and this kiss included a lot of other frills, like blowing puffs of air around the lips to 'make them tickle' (!). It's equal opportunity here - girls chase and catch boys too. Horrified but bemused, I told another parent about it, and she said that her daughter, who is now in Year 3, played the same thing when she was in the Lower School. I mentioned it to The Bun's teacher when we had our parent-teacher evening and she said that the teachers on the playground are aware of this game and do stop it if they see it, but it's a big play area and I doubt they catch this game going on often. No wonder why all the kids seem to have a permanent cold!
That's about all I can remember. Apart from the small group of boys that he plays with, there's another band of football-crazy boys who find every opportunity they can to head out onto the field to kick a ball around. When I ask what the girls play, he tells me that they play princesses or 'Frozen'. He's never seen the movie before but he knows what it's all about and he even knows that everybody just wants to be Elsa. Haha!
I really like that he gets a lot of outdoor playtime in school with opportunities to dig around in the grass and mud and get dirty. After all, this sort of play won't last forever; The Bun also tells me that the older kids in the Upper School (ages 8 to 11) tend to spend their playtime doing sports or hanging around 'just talking'. Everyone's now looking forward to winter because then there's snow play. It makes me wish I were a kid again.
It's one of the best ways to get an insight into what his friendships are like. From what I gather, he mostly plays with the same gang of boys and the occasional girl who joins in their games. I discovered a few months ago that many of the children had met beforehand in the summer before school started last year. As a result, a lot of them already knew each other when school started and in that way The Bun was late on the social front when he joined the class. This year there are seven new kids in his class, and predictably the cliques have formed - the 'old gang' who were all in Reception together last year, and the 'new kids'. From what I hear, the new girls have integrated better into the class than the new boys. I can tell that The Bun enjoys a sense of belonging with his group of friends, even though, being kids (and being boys) all the friendships amongst his group comes with a fair share of fighting, name-calling, and switching best friends on a regular basis.
There are two scheduled playtimes in school: one during the mid-morning break (snack time), and one after lunch. Unless it is raining or snowing heavily, all the kids are sent outside to play. There are a couple of teachers who supervise the danger zones, like the areas near the carpark and the forest, but otherwise the children are left to play on their own and sort out their own conflicts. There is a large, open, concrete playground area outside the school buildings, a wooded area for digging and climbing in (The Bun's favourite place), a climbing frame with slides, and a large football pitch. No students are permitted inside the classroom buildings during playtime unless they are with a teacher or an adult. If the weather is bad, the kids have what is called 'wet play', which means they stay in their classrooms and play with the toys there. From what The Bun tells me, sometimes during wet play everything gets so chaotic inside that the teachers simply put on some cartoons on the whiteboard to get some peace and quiet. They mostly watch Charlie and Lola, Peppa Pig and Numberjacks. I like knowing that even teachers aren't above using an electronic babysitter sometimes.
Swinging at the football pitch
These are some of the games that The Bun plays in school (the names of the games as told to me):
~ Potions: this involves a lot of digging around in the soil and mixing in dead leaves, twigs and pebbles so that it forms a 'potion'. There is a natural spring in the school field that flows continuously, and everyone goes to it for a drink of water. The Bun told me that they get the water from the spring to make the soil wet and muddy. When I asked him how they got the water from the spring to the potion 'pot', he told me they used their mouths! The boys would take huge mouthfuls of water and run back and forth from the spring to spit the water out into the potion they were mixing. Ew. After the potion is completed, they use twigs, leaves, and their hands (double ew) to spread the mixture all over the tree trunks and roots, because apparently it 'helps the trees grow better'.
~ Fossil hunters: plenty of scrabbling around in the gravel and soil looking for fossils and interesting rocks. The Bun's Reception teacher last year jokingly complained that The Bun kept dragging in all sorts of muddy rocks into the classroom to present to her. Now that The Bun is obsessed with geology, his rock collecting mania has more than doubled. Today he came home with a rock that was somehow broken in two. He and another boy had managed to break it in half by throwing it around because they wanted to look for crystals and gems inside. The Bun is fascinated by geodes (hollow rocks with crystal and mineral deposits inside) and thinks that all rocks are potential geodes even though I keep reminding him that most geodes are found in volcanic regions or caves.
~ Catch the Squidgies: 'squidgies' is the word the children in school use to call firebugs, a small, harmless red-and-black bug that can be found all over the grassy areas in the warmer months. The kids catch them and try to see who can have the most bugs crawl up and down their arms. The Bun says that they have been told not to 'squidge' the bugs, so after playing with them, the kids just flick them back into the grass and the poor bugs live to see another day.
Firebugs getting their er, thing on
~ Spying on [name]: a variation of the police-and-thief game. A group of detectives have to hunt down the 'baddie' and put him in prison (the steps outside the school office). Sometimes the baddie has 'very strong arms' and can break open the prison walls to escape. They apparently take it in turns to be the baddie but The Bun tells me he always refuses! I'll let him figure out the implications of that on his own.
~ Shop: the girls set up shop on one of the benches in the playground and make things to sell using dead leaves, pebbles, and flowers. Sometimes these represent jewellery, sometimes sweets. The Bun and some other kids pretend that they are customers. I'm not quite sure what they use as currency though.
~ Star Wars X-Fighter: lots of chasing each other trying to shoot the other down.
~ Kissy Time: The Bun came home one day and laughed as he told us that when his friend N shouts 'kissy time!' all the boys and girls chase each other and try to kiss each other on the lips. He demonstrated on me and this kiss included a lot of other frills, like blowing puffs of air around the lips to 'make them tickle' (!). It's equal opportunity here - girls chase and catch boys too. Horrified but bemused, I told another parent about it, and she said that her daughter, who is now in Year 3, played the same thing when she was in the Lower School. I mentioned it to The Bun's teacher when we had our parent-teacher evening and she said that the teachers on the playground are aware of this game and do stop it if they see it, but it's a big play area and I doubt they catch this game going on often. No wonder why all the kids seem to have a permanent cold!
That's about all I can remember. Apart from the small group of boys that he plays with, there's another band of football-crazy boys who find every opportunity they can to head out onto the field to kick a ball around. When I ask what the girls play, he tells me that they play princesses or 'Frozen'. He's never seen the movie before but he knows what it's all about and he even knows that everybody just wants to be Elsa. Haha!
I really like that he gets a lot of outdoor playtime in school with opportunities to dig around in the grass and mud and get dirty. After all, this sort of play won't last forever; The Bun also tells me that the older kids in the Upper School (ages 8 to 11) tend to spend their playtime doing sports or hanging around 'just talking'. Everyone's now looking forward to winter because then there's snow play. It makes me wish I were a kid again.