The Gardener's Watering Can

Children are seeds hidden around the playground, and the teacher-gardener walks by with a spray bottle giving off a fine mist: once a seed gets wet, it grows into a dancing flower. It warms up the body with posture changes and lets kids enjoy a cool mist on a hot day.

How to play

1. We all become seeds: crouched and curled into a ball, spread out on the grass (1 min).
2. The teacher walks by with the spray bottle and mists a back or arms; a wet seed slowly starts to grow (1 min).
3. When everyone is standing, we are flowers: we move our petal-arms to the drum without moving our feet (1 min).
4. The wind blows: flowers bend one way and the other, and when the wind is strong they turn around (1 min).
5. The flowers pull up their roots and run through the garden to find a new spot to plant themselves when the drum stops (1 min).
6. Night falls: the flowers close up little by little until they're calm seeds again (1 min).

Rules

• I wait for the mist to reach me.
• Water goes on arms and backs, never on faces.
• When I'm a flower, my feet stay planted.
• I run without bumping into the other flowers.

Variations

Adaptations

• Limited mobility: the seed sits and grows by stretching arms and torso; the wind moves the arms.
• Autism or water sensitivity: the child can choose to be “watered” with a tap on the shoulder instead of water.
• Visual impairment: the teacher says the child's name before spraying so they aren't startled.

Learning goals

• Go from crouching to standing with control.
• Keep balance while moving the arms with feet still.
• Show with the body how a plant grows.

Equipment for a class of 25

• Spray bottle: 1
• Hand drum: 1

Teacher tip

Test the spray bottle on mist, not stream, and use clean tap water. Ask at the start who doesn't want to get wet and respect it. Kids tend to all pop up at the first spray: remind them “no water, no growing.”

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