How do you make space for a windstorm in the classroom?

Furniture is being shoved out of the way as a child moves through the daycare. He pushes a table up against the toy fridge and stove, knocking over the two wooden chairs with his hands, and tipping over the child size coffee table. He runs back across the room to the entrance door then returns with his arms held out at his sides zig zaging slightly saying quietly, "I am the windstorm." Shoving a plastic chair with metal feet across the floor creates a scraping sound. "I see you are the wind but when you push the chair across the floor it is making scratches." He stops and looks at the floor and turns back to the table and crawls under it informing his friend, "There is a windstorm come hide." The friend crawls under. I comment, "I see there has been a lot of damage. Who is going to fix thing and put them back together." As he picks up a cake pan, "This is a drill," holding it up to the toy fridge, "brrrr."

What looked like random crashing through the daycare causing destruction with out thought was actually a very complicated dramatic play involving weather. We have been having big winds lately. We have been pointing out the different kinds of weather we experience during the Fall and Winter. We have been taking about weather words and printing them out. We have made playing in the rain enticing by making the outdoors a big water sensory experience. Can we really shut down a child who has found a way to incorporate weather into the dramatic play? And when we actually look closely at how the child is moving his body and the furniture we can see that he is actually moving purposely and with much control. He did not slam the chairs over he tipped them slowly. When he shoved the table up against the fridge and stove he did not crash it. When I commented that the chair was scratching the floor he stopped and redirected his play. He also took my comment about who was going to fix the damage and incorporated it into his play. Very little redirection was needed to keep the play from becoming out of control. Play is often messy, loud, and needs to be.