Georgie - “I liked to climb the army.”
Leif - “The kites are flying in the air.”
Wilder - “I liked going up the stairs at the army place.”
Sage - “I liked exploring around. I had lots of fun here.”
Ollie - I liked going on that thing that looked like a palace. I pretended to be a Night Queen.”
Dylan - “I liked playing Star Wars with Ollie. I was Darth Vader and Ollie was a storm trooper.”
Elias - “I liked playing in the leaves.”
Leif - “I liked to see the monsters. He come to eat every body!”
Frankie - “I liked the trees.”
Maggie - “Rainbow”
Dominic - “I liked finding rocks.”
Elias - “I think there’s no monsters because we can’t open the door.”
Ollie - “I know the monsters were there because I saw the drawn monsters on the door.”
Eila - “I found a stick and I loved walking with the stick.”
Courtney has been working on some play story reflections with the children where they take a moment to reflect on their day by drawing pictures and telling a story about them. Once we got back to campus from our bunker adventure, the older kids, Georgina, Wilder, Ollie, and Dylan asked me if they could do play reflections! This tells me that they are enjoying the process of reflection and that it has become meaningful to them. We practice reflection as a way to enhance children’s confidence in speaking about their personal experiences. It also opens up the opportunity to work out a conflict with a friend that happened earlier that day, or a way to express emotions that children’ couldn’t really express in the moment of their play.
Ollie recalled many details about the monster theme when he drew his own version of the skeleton-bat. He even made up his own story about it (which I think he was telling me the story of the narrative that was going on in his head while he was playing at the bunkers). For example, during our verbal reflections, Ollie said, “I liked going on that thing that looked like a palace. I pretended to be a ‘Night Queen.’” and this was his play story:
