Making Mush

While I attacked the endless bag of paperwork to be shredded, Clay played with our newest batch of play dough. The noisy shredder was a constant distraction. Then when he saw the bag of shredded paper his dinosaurs had to jump in and out of it making a trail of paper shreds on the floor. Suddenly, I had an idea! We could take this play outside, add water to the paper and make mush for the dinosaurs to play in. (I was having flashbacks to making paper pulp for homemade paper.) Brilliant! Now here is what really happened: We took two buckets out to the front lawn with shredded paper and dinosaurs. I turned on the hose and he had already dumped the paper on the lawn. I rescued as many shreds as I could back into the buckets and added water. He proceeded to rescue the dinosaurs from the paper shreds, spreading more onto the lawn. The paper never broke down, mush was never created. However, Clayton was heavily involved with 'busy play'. I grabbed a chair and read the mail while he put dinosaurs in and out of the buckets, poured the water/paper mixture from one bucket to the other and paused momentarily to remove paper from his toes. I love 'busy play'. I describe it as play that uses active thinking, purpose and concentration even if as adults we can not identity the why or what of the play. When I taught preschool some of the best moments was looking out onto the play yard and seeing groups of children's involved in this busy play. My idea of making mush may of backfired, and still needs to cleaned up off the grass, but his play was wonderful!