Great Idea for Parks
I saw something yesterday that I'd never thought of. There is a span of a few years where pretend cooking is a sure fire hit in the play ground. "Can you fix me some broccoli?" "We haven't got broccoli! Here's bagels!" (Accompanied with flung handfuls of wood chips).
However, yesterday, I saw a nanny that had brought a whole collection of cups and containers for enhancing this game.
It worked great, there was a knot of kids that were occupied for at least thirty minutes. She had tons of stuff, so that sharing was accomplished without overt conflict. Even my son was able to shyly ask for an ice cream and then play for a bit. They were playing in a park (Spring) with a great little kiosk type stand next to a long tube, so they had a good food prep area, and then a good selling area. Clearly the coffee-shop paradigm is well understood by area children. (I was perhaps the only adult there without a cup of joe in hand.)
However, people being people, after sometime there developed a split among the kids, with two bossy groups. I couldn't quite figure out the root of the debate, but it had to do with how to arrange the bowls of chips in the tunnel. Feelings were starting to rise, so I moved my son away. They have turned the water fountains on in this park, so I thought it would be a good chance to fill our water bottles up. I had forgotten his predilection for pouring water out, so what I imagined would be a fun join project of filling the water bottles turned out to be a tense negotiation between a person that just wanted to fill the bottles, perhaps take a sip, and move on, and a person that wanted to spend a good deal of time filling up and then pouring out bottles. So we filled them up three or four times, I just drank all the water I expected I'd need in the next hour or two and then let him empty it out again. Finally, I managed to convince him to keep some water in the bottle and to move away from the spigot. As he walked off, I tried to tighten the spigot so hard that no other toddlers would be able to open it but not so tight that other parents couldn't open it.
See the error?
I glanced up at where he was taking the water bottle as he arrived at the tense wood chip argument. I leaped forward and grabbed the bottle just as he was flinging the water at one of the children. Somehow, the water went mostly back into the bottle as I swept it forward and up. The targeted child ended up with a tiny splash, that went entirely on her hat, not on her hair or face. Her nanny saw that no harm was done, her feelings started to be hurt but then she recovered. My son was amenable to being swept up and placed in the stroller, with a few "blah blah blah" words from me about not throwing water on people in the park.
I think I will still bring containers and cups along, but we won't set up shop next to a water fountain.