A jungle gym for Hermie

We have three classroom hermit crabs. The children love them.

One day while we were fiddling around with a good place to put them for observation, a crab climbed over a piece of plastic packaging and slid down the side. Two of the children thought this was great fun for Hermie (they call all the crabs Hermie) so they decided to make him a jungle gym. We thought about what kinds of equipment the jungle gym should have. we created plans, and then we trekked into the Recycle Room (they beg to go there whenever they can) and they picked out some materials. 

A lot of critical thinking and trial and error (and many trips to the recycle room) went into creating the equipment and I'm skimming over these details for the sake of time management. I understand this is the 'meat' of Reggio, but I only have so many hours (minutes is more like it) in my busy day to blog. The children originally started out with a one compartment jungle gym, but that turned into two compartments as they added more equipment. I helped with cutting the hole that served as a doorway in between the boxes in the location they designated as it required a box cutter. Here is what they chose to build:

A see-saw:

A slide with ladder:

A climbing wall:

Tunnels, a green zip-line, a (white) swing, and a blue and yellow 'landing pad':

This is a fraction of the project. Some children participated by drawing pictures and taping them to the outside of the box as well. They worked on this over a few weeks and we let the crabs loose inside. They were a little disappointed that the crabs didn't actually play much but I reminded them that crabs are more active at night. 

The end!