The Telescope Car Launcher

From our observations of how popular jump cars are and how exciting throwing things of the Fort is we decided to try adding a 'launcher' to the Fort. This also came about from our discussions on Mary Poppins and how fascinated the children are with the Admiral and Chimney Sweeps cannonball battle. This morning I set about attaching this recycled piece of pipe to the top of the Fort rail. Firstly Aiken noticed me up on the fort and said: "Erin why are you up there thats only for kids, your too big" Well to his surprise I decided to slide down the slippery dip. He thought that was very funny... Now where was I.... ok so I am attaching the pipe when Obi approaches and begins climbing up.. with haste I might add... to see what I am up to, he exclaims excitedly 'a telescope, look guys we have a telescope' He then proceeds to look through the pipe, he is happy to find that it moves.




Next Malu and Conan climb up to the Fort with their cars in tow, Malu walks straight over to the telescope and runs his car through it watching as it launches and lands on the ground below, satisfied he slides down to repeat the process again. Conan also runs his car through the telescope...funny how it is no longer a telescope but a car launcher... Conan's car is much larger and has three cars attached so it goes zooming out the end of the 'telescope' and lands with a crash... We all exclaim 'woah' and I race of to get more cars to launch and some bean bags. Obi and Samantha discover that the telescope can also launch bean bags... what a fantastic piece of equipment this pipe turned out to be.



We were all having so much fun launching things out of the telescope pipe that we may have forgotten how to share and take turns, why is it when something is so exciting children tend to forget about those who are sharing the experience and making it such fun? The trouble began with a certain train of bigger faster cars....Conan and Malu, our jump car pro's are such good friends and mean each other no harm but it is hard when they both want the same car and the telescope at the same time..... My oh my.... well we all had to stop our fun while the two friends 'negotiated' and that is putting it nicely.. the outcome was that neither got the car and the telescope was abandoned.... perhaps this will be a lesson they will use the next time we play telescope jump cars...



Play provides children with a safe and familiar context to explore their interests, develop friendships, and build on their understanding of others. Through play children build friendships and learn how to maintain play with others, they build on their ability to share, negotiate and express ideas. Play provides children with skills for life and we as educators can create meaningful play situations for children to explore and develop these skills.



The addition of this simple piece of pipe created an exciting play situation that appealed to several children, they used this play setting to explore their imagination and test out ideas - will my car fit through here? This play experience built on Obi and Malu's friendship and provided Conan and Malu with a safe context to test their negotiation skills.