There is nothing like a day of steady rain to present us with an altered learning environment, a unique set of challenges and fantastic chance to explore new things. We have the whole keeping warm and dry thing pretty much covered when it comes to the rain. Everyone has their coats, boots and water-proof pants, and when they are only faced with protecting them from the rain, they do a fantastic job. With the emer-gence of giant puddles...and I mean giant, the children soon discovered that if you actually sit and crawl around in the wa-ter, you will not stay totally dry underneath your waterproofs! The chance to return to a warm dry spot for lunch, meant that they were free to explore the water and mud to their hearts content. While it may look like they just spent the morning jumping in puddles, there is still a massive amount of leaning that is hap-pening through this play. The outdoor environment is never totally familiar, it is always in a state of flux. The seasons come and go, the cycle of life for the plants and animals is always creating change, growth and new life. The en-vironment at bushland park, like all natural environments, is very dynamic , it constantly evolves and pro-vides new, and slightly different invitations to notice, explore, wonder, hypothesise, spark our curiosity and imagination every time we visit. When you add rain to this equation, magical and challenging things start to occur. Firstly is the added sen-sory input the rain falling on you all day creates, for some children this in itself is the challenge, for others it doesn't even present a bump in the road. There are those that love to be covered in the mud and the water, or both, delighting in the whole body sensory feedback it provides. Then there are those children for whom getting mud on their hands is a very confronting thing. In the middle of these two groups we have those children who play as if nothing has really changed. They explore, build and play , getting a bit wet and muddy is just par for the course. They don't seem to notice much at all. Even for these children whose learning isn't so much involving seeking or avoiding sensory input, they are still building resilience, regulating their minds and bodies, challenging themselves in some many often unseen ways.

Lobethal Community Kindergarten, Nature Connect 2016 lobethalkgn.sa.edu.au Blog Post Term 2 Week 6 : JUMPING IN PUDDLES

Playing out in the natural environment involves walk-ing, exploring, climbing and playing on uneven sur-faces, dirt, clay, rocks, leaves, bark, trees and branches. Playing in this environment takes balance, agility, dex-terity and depth perception. Our children have been building up the skills to navigate this space with relative ease , as they have familiarised themselves and built a relationship with the area over our weekly visits, but today everything changed a little. The constant rain meant that the dirt we could once dig in had turned to thick squelchy mud. The paths, that have often been clear and easily negotiated were littered with debris and large puddles creating amazing learning opportuni-ties at every turn. The logs and branches that have been easy to balance along, clamber over , jump from, were slippery and difficult to use in the way we were used to. Everything had changed a little, and with out even real-ising it, every child out there drew on their prior knowl-edge of the park, their prior knowledge of the effect

water has on various surfaces, prior experiences of being exposed to the elements, and any skills they had innately acquired from this over their lives. They adjusted their balance and footing as they walked along the slippery surfaces, they internally risk assessed the situation before and during at-tempts to climb and explore the fallen branches. Many explored the puddles with delight, while oth-ers preferred discovering a route to make their way around them . With out even thinking they rose to the challenge, adjusted the way they did things to compensate for the changed conditions, rev-elled in the sensory opportunities to experience the environment in a new and exciting ways. They noticed the new gifts of toadstools and fallen seedpods, that the change in season has presented to us. They also noticed the things that weren't there, the one o'clocks that usually adorn the side of the path and the hillside near the dead forest, kept their petals tightly closed , shielding themselves from the weather. The bird songs that usually resonate through the valley as we make our way up the hill from the dinosaur forest and along the quiet listening walk were noticeable absent. The gen-tle sound of the rain dripping from the leaves, and the squelch under our feet was often accompa-nied by a new sound, the sound of several different native frogs that we heard along our walks.

Although the rain did present some challenges, it also opened a wonderful range of experiences and chances for explorative play, and the opportunity for experiencing the absolute delight of young children totally engrossed in the wonderful experience of jumping in puddles!!!

Written by Nic

Lobethal Community Kindergarten, Nature Connect 2016 lobethalkgn.sa.edu.au Blog Post Term 2 Week 6 : JUMPING IN PUDDLES