These last few weeks I’ve felt like a piece of elastic stretched between two incompatible opposites: a child’s world and the world of power tools and sharp, pointy and fragile things.
In between helping build I run to check on children or set them up with some game or something which will keep them busy for a few minutes.
We’ve built a cubby house under a tree where they happily and imaginatively hang out together, set up a playground using things around the yard, encourage lots of sand-pit, collecting and dirt-digging play, but by far the best game we’ve come up with is The Expedition.
Here’s how it goes:
1. Draw a map
2. Make some ‘treasure’. I put two teaspoons into a ‘treasure chest’ which they found in their sandpit then hid two fruit & jelly cups in their cubby house. 
3. Hand the map over to the kids
4. Off they go!
Tulitha King 