Magic in the Orca Class

Four and five year olds have a fascination with powerful play themes. One year there were the Sharks, a group of children who liked to pretend to be mean sharks. They would dress in the red cloth in the dramatic play area, and hang all of the clothespins from the cloth as their teeth. They had a place on the playground known as the Shark Cave, and they chased the other children to catch them and put them in the cave. Not everyone liked this game. Another year the boys spent most playground days trying to build traps to catch the unicorns (guess who they were?), and another year, it was all super hero play.

This year it was a variety of play, with Star Wars figuring strongly. Then several kids began to read the Harry Potter stories, and so the play changed it's tone, and included many magic spells (and, of course, a lot of chasing).

We decided to make magic wands. Everyone found just the right stick and we decorated them and gave them magic.

In our journals we wrote about the magic our wands had.

You would think the girls might have less gruesome magic, but not always so.

The ideas and spells were very interesting.

We played with our magic wands on the playground, and then used this idea of magic to write a play for the last day of preschool.