The Explorium

When I was home in New York over the summer, I visited an outside explorium at one of the local libraries with my nephew and niece. It was very cool with all different centers to encourage imaginative play. I decided it would be great to have something similar (on a smaller scale) here at the orphanage. Since the group from CO was here, I asked if they would be willing to help me set it up yesterday.
I did not have high hopes going into the project. I had started on Friday morning at 6:30 AM searching for wood, sand, mulch, and other tools that I would need. I ended up empty handed. So Saturday morning I set out again and was much more successful. When I returned to the orphanage, I was told that somebody had made a donation and included in the donation was a plastic turtle sand box. How cool is that?
Four of the women from the team stayed behind at the orphanage for the afternoon to help. We started our project by surveying the area that the explorium was to be set up in. It was filled with llama poop, rusty metal poles, and a huge hole in the middle that had previously been used as a compost pile. Once again, I wasn't feeling that this project would be the most succesful of projects.
Well four hours later, the llama poop was gone, the compost pile filled in, the rusty poles removed and now it is a very fun space. The centers include a water table, a sandbox, a tire with sand, a mulch pile for digging, tree stump hopping, and a chalkboard and painting center. There are some centers that I would love to add during the year; including a small stage with musical instruments and a sensory wall.
The kids all watched as we were working, and they were excited to try out the sturdiness of our tree stumps. I will take some more pictures of the kids playing at the centers this week. A big thank you to the CO team for helping me with this project!

Drilling the water table into a tree stump


Transporting the sand over to the sand box

Using the post digger to sink the trunks into the ground

Here are the trunks that they can climb or sit on, the mulch pile is in the background, and you can see the blackboard and art center in the very back.

The completed water table, sand tire, and sand box