What's your tree hut made of?

Junior tree-hut designers hard at work.

Usually when Little Kid and me walk home from school I'm faster than him so I'm in front and he drags along behind going on about all sorts of stuff that I can't be bothered talking about. It's mostly stupid things like how he swapped a muesli bar for a peanut butter sandwich at lunchtime, or how the teacher said he was the best at doing an "a" in printing time.
So when he started on about the trees and his class talking about making them more fun to play in, I just kept walking faster to get home to go on the Playstation.
But I stopped suddenly when I heard the words "tree huts". "What's that? What about tree huts?" Little Kid explained this inquiry his class was doing. They thought up lots of ideas for making the trees they're allowed to climb more fun for everyone.
As usual with Juniors some of them had dumb ideas like eating your lunch up a tree or getting Spiderman thread and swinging around the branches. Finally they settled on the idea of having tree huts.
Little Kid's class got really excited when they understood that this wasn't just a pretend thing that teachers get you to do; but real. If they made some designs, built some models and planned just how it would work, then they would be able to do a presentation to the principal. If she approved then tree huts would be built in the trees for all Juniors to play in!
So his class set about designing and building. From what Little Kid told me it sounded a bit like the Three Little Pigs story cause one girl said if the huts were made of sticks then you could take them apart everyday and put them back together a different way. Another person said you could have brick huts, that way they'd never get blown away by the wind. Anyway there was lots of discussion about roofs or no roofs, sides or no sides, how high up a tree it should be, and how you would get up into them. They built models out of iceblock sticks, Lego, twigs and all sorts of stuff. The teacher took photos and recorded everything on video and in a book ready for the presentation.
The day came when Ms O'Connor was invited to the classroom for Little Kid's class to ask if there could be huts in the trees. She watched the video and listened to the book being read. Then she asked questions to be sure that the kids had done their investigation properly.
Little Kid said it was funny when Ms O'Connor wondered if she would have to eat a gazillion iceblocks to get enough sticks for the huts! He told her that it would really be wooden planks they needed.
A big cheer went up and the class clapped when she agreed that the Juniors were allowed three tree huts.
Okay - now us seniors want a skateboard bowl ...