A Mary Poppins epiphany

We’ve been having lots of really wet days last month.

Not your usual light drizzle. But full on stormy, pouring down with rain kind of weather. Too wet to play outside. Too stormy to go out anywhere. For a moment I wished I could wave a magic wand to make all the clouds disappear and bring out the sunshine and blue skies.

Do you remember Mary Poppins?

I absolutely loved watching that movie as a child (and still do). I remember one of my favourite scenes was when the children (and Bert) held hands with Mary Poppins and they magically jumped inside a picture and went off to have some funny little adventure there.

How wonderful would it be if I could have some magical fairy godmother to whisk me away to some place else exotic and beautiful and WARM… perhaps to Bali or The Maldives. Summer in New York or Paris or London. Maybe Santorini or Nice. Even Singapore or my hometown KK…

Anywhere but this miserable, cold, wet winter in Perth.

I am just so DONE with winter here.

Please be OVER already.

Please. PLEASE… PLEEEEEASE!!!

 

Then one cold, rainy morning I found myself driving a train of chairs filled with children and afterwards sitting cross-legged on a mat sipping on tea and cakes made from air.

“Where we going now aunty Serene???” called out my cherubic passengers behind me.

“Oh, where would you like to go?” I called back.

“To the zoo!!! The zoo!!!” they yelled excitedly.

“Okay, buckle your seatbelts, children! Here we go! Toot, toot!”

“HOORAY!!!”
”There it is! There’s the zoo! I see it!”
”Oh, I can see an elephant!”
”I see a lion!!! ROAR!!!”
”There’s a giraffe!!!”

We got off our ‘train’ and walked around pointing out all sorts of animals and creatures. Somehow a lion ended up escaping from it’s cage. So we all screeched and hurried back to our ‘train’. “Quick! Quick Aunty Serene! Before he eats us!!!”

And then I had one of those epiphany type moments.

It was a Mary Poppins moment.

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I realised that I  was Mary Poppins.

Using my magic…

We made a train out of chairs and travelled to all sorts of places…
the shops, the library, play group, the park, the swimming pool , the zoo.

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We made a secret fort from blankets to hide out together…

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We used paper to make a familiar old story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff come alive…

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We transformed an ordinary morning tea into a real fruit shop…

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I wonder. Did all those adventures those two children have with Mary Poppins really happen? The adventure inside the chalk picture… the tea party on the ceiling… watching her pull out an endless number of things out of her bottomless carpet bag (sounds a bit like my bag too)…

Who knows?

Perhaps Mary Poppins was actually just a typical, ordinary, old nanny.

But seen through the eyes of those two children, she just seemed to possess a special kind of magic to turn ordinary everyday events into extraordinary adventures.

 

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You can check out last month’s roundup of activities at our Family Day Care and more of my other play and learning ideas. Stay tuned for next month’s roundup!