Food for thought Fridays - Waldorf-inspired real play

I found this great website yesterday that talked about Waldorf-inspired real play, something I'd never heard of before but which I'm getting increasingly excited about as I find out more.

I'll let you read the post that inspired me yourself, and go straight to telling you what L and I got up to yesterday as a result of me reading it.

I strapped L to my chest in a baby carrier and we went outside to pick flowers for a bouquet. L held the little plastic bowl that I put the flowers in, until a pretty pink camellia took her fancy and she traded her bowl for that.

She happily munched on her camellia (she doesn't seem any worse off for it) while I snipped flowers from around our section. We then took them back upstairs to the kitchen where we chose a jar and arranged them in it. This took a bit of time as L wanted to grab all the flowers back out, but we got there in the end.

Both of us had a blast, and it was far nicer doing it with L than if I had left her on her play-mat while I did it myself.

Later as I was reading a story to L I saw a picture of a flower arrangement. I was able to point to it and say that it was like the one we had made. This would have helped built context for L, making story-time a richer experience for her.