ABSTRACT
Whether exploring in the woods, on the beach or in the garden or jumping around in puddles, very young children’s engagement, enjoyment and high level of involvement with the available loose materials which change with the weather and the season is a constant delight to me. Perhaps more interesting are the actions with, on and in the materials that children show. Like you, I have watched hundreds of children play and have played myself as a child; what I did in the sand, I saw my own children and other children do; what I did with water is also repeated through the generations. Sand, mud, sticks, stones, cones, shells, petals, leaves and logs, we reach out, we pick up, we mix, we transport, we taste, we pile up, we dig down, we scrape and gauge, we build up and knock down, we cover up and collect, we throw, we make shelter and we make marks. We run, climb, lie down, jump, laugh in and shelter from the rain, huddle round bright fires and chase the wind; we look for and find small creatures and evidence of larger creatures. Like first explorers or hunter-gatherers, a woodland, a park, a hill, a river, a forest, a garden or a meadow is discovered by children anew, even though ‘it was always there’.
