On Thursday September 30, a group  of children went for a walk and entered a park area. They looked around for a few minutes, picking up leaves, sticks and grass before they scattered to explore more. One child continued to pick up pinecones; they bent over forwards, reached to pick one up, stood up and then transferred the pinecone to their other hand and held it close to their body.

One pine cone was near a tree. The child walked over to the pinecone they saw, picked up the object and looked at it. The child then released all of the pinecones until they all dropped onto the ground before the child leaned forwards until they placed both hands and knees on the ground.

The child crawled underneath the branches of a pine tree. Another child noticed this movement. The child approached the tree and pushed the branches aside before walking through them. “Tree,” the child said.
Once underneath the branches, the child walked around the trunk two times before reaching up to hold on to a low branch. The child pulled on the branch, then leaned backwards and lifted their feet, transferring all of his weight to his hands.

“Me swing!” the child said as the movement of lifting up the legs caused his body to gently move forward, then backward. The child repeated the action, putting his feet down while maintaining a grip on the branch and walked backwards three steps before lifting his feet up to repeat the swinging motion.

So What?

-tested the branch to see if it would hold his weight
-discovered the back and forth swinging motion through a hypothetical attempt
-entered play with peers and other adults when he followed the other child to see where they had gone (HDLH, 2014, pg. 26).
-demonstrated leadership and independence when the child crawled under the tree
-experimented to see how many pinecones could be held as they were collected
-classified the pinecones, only selecting to pick up those similar objects4

Now What?

-test branches to see how much movement are in them
-measure the circumference of tree branches and our arms: compare the two
-collect found objects and sort them out (classify)
-create a swing on a higher branch