The Magic of Child Guided Play - A Light Panel Forest

Being fully present as your child plays does not always mean you interact - unless invited, of course. Sometimes its nice to just sit back and watch the magic happen. My son was playing with his dragon fly a lot yesterday, so while he was sleeping, I set something up hoping to inspire him to play and create. Initially, I just watched as he created. I simply LOVE how his mind works.

THE INVITATION

Agate Slices and Rocks

He made a dragonfly - "one, two, three, four - four wings....and one, two, three, four - four wings" - as he counted and compared and then beamed with pride at his creating.

Quietly adding rocks and more agate slices.

"There are lots and lots of dragonflies now....in the forest. Oh, its raining. There are rain clouds in the sky. The forest has lot of dooga digglies everywhere." [I have no idea what dooga digglies are - he likes to make up words sometimes. LOL].

This was the last step before he started to clean up. BEAUTIFUL!! Do you see all the dragonflies in the forest? I do!


Later, he asked me to make another forest with him. So I helped by asking open ended questions and having him pick items from the playroom that he would like to add to our forest. He told me it needed tall tall trees in case the giraffes wanted to come and eat the leaves. He asked me to help make tunnels throughout his forest - so we made them - TOGETHER. This was OUR forest......

Just to add another dimension, we put a 3 way mirror behind our forest.

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