Recycled Goods and Shale: Creating a new perspective of play Shale Blog – March 10, 2017
As we observe how our new dramatic play area is expanding into a full on grocery store, we are now realizing that yes we love the empty food packages but we really enjoy the shapes and sizes of recycled goods. That sparked the question “Where else can we add recycling into play?”. The joy of recycled goods is that it allows for a multi-purpose life and can be used for almost anything. A simple brown box can turn into a house for miniature play, or a box turns into a climbing structure. Eva led the way in testing out the boxes strength; she explored them by taking a controlled risk by climbing on the boxes. Eva noticed which boxes allowed her to sit on them, while other boxes would fold under her. Once Eva showed that one box wouldn’t collapse under her, she clapped for her accomplishment and soon after Ellis and Thea joined her by climbing on boxes. Thea moved from climbing of the boxes to pushing one around the room and collecting any items she found on the floor, connecting back to our interest of collecting items.
Recycled materials are slowly becoming a staple of interest and play in the room. The dramatic play area is full of empty food items and the children take those items into other areas of the room. An empty juice bottle is being used to collect items by Ellis each time a loose material bin is out. As well as our loose part shelf is full of recycled milk jug caps, paper towel rolls and corks. Recycled materials makes every adult or child use their imagination to think out side of items main purpose. In the PPP, The Alberta Framework, they discuss how introducing children to a sustainable future through taking care of nature and recycling helps build a foundation for caring, being compassionate to the community and environment the child lives in. Demonstrating how each child is a might citizen in our community. Shale Room’s set up is inspired by the Reggio Emilia’s natural-outdoor feeling inside, from that we have added more natural materials and recycled items and stepped away from the more traditional toy idea. Demonstrating how we can take items from our surrounding environments and adapt them to our play.