Many of the invitations to play set out for our children by their Jolly grownups last week had a Hallowe’en inspired focus, because, as this exciting evening draws ever closer, it is very much on our children’s minds and we always strive to follow their interests!!
We frequently overhear them excitedly talking about how they are looking forward to dressing up and going trick or treating with their mummies and daddies as they recall previous experiences (mostly involving HUGE buckets of collected sweets 
) from other years.
Throughout the week our children have enjoyed exploring with a wide range of different materials and resources across all rooms.
Stephen decided that to extend his own children’s spooky interests further they could work together to create a HUGE floor painting; which involved orange paint (did we mention our children are currently also pumpkin 
obsessed too?!), black sugar paper and a variety of paint rollers!
This was extremely exciting, but there was also ‘method behind the madness’ as soooooo much learning was naturally taking place…
Stephen knew that whilst his children were participating in such an activity they would be focusing upon developing their movement skills; as they were busy finding different ways to move in order to create marks on their paper…
They experimented with their body’s movement and placement and they trialled different ways of moving; would they sit and lean forward? Could they lay on their stomach and stretch out their arms to paint? Would they decide to kneel down and lean their body forward whilst balancing carefully?
The aim was to NOT touch the black paper (with anything apart from the roller), but instead to use their bodies to balance and stretch… This then in turn strengthened their muscles and the stability of their cores!!!!
Of course all our children were totally oblivious to all the learning that was taking place and why this activity had been planned for and set up in this way in the first place. Instead they just became totally immersed in excitedly chattering about Hallowe’en and they loved finding out different ways to move in order to successfully make their marks whilst ensuring all the paper was covered in exactly the way they desired it to be!!
xxxx
