Thursday, January 23, 2020

Wood: Our Observations and Ideas for Building

​During meeting, we revisited some of our wood reflections as we presented the day's experiences. Austin and Evelyn added some thoughts about the lines and grain observed in wood.

Austin: "There's lines because there's lines in the tree."
Evelyn: "It looks like a rainbow." 

In fact, later Evelyn painted the rainbow she observed in the wood:

Lane and Maren drew and painted representations of wood grain as well:

Meanwhile Austin and Jack worked with pieces of wood to build models of their building ideas. 

Jack: "I know what I want to build. A dog house."

As they worked, the children communicated about each other's need for specific pieces of wood.

Jack: "Do you need this board, Austin?" 
Austin: "No."
Jack, having checked with Austin first, decided to use the board. 
Jack  selects another piece:  "Do you need this log?"
Austin: "Yeah, let me see it. Do you have a wooden log?" (in your design)
Jack: "No, I don't have a wooden log."
Austin: "I need one right here."

While working, Austin expresses another workshop idea he is thinking about:
"I know...how things are made. Like clocks and stuff. Like you open it and learn about it."

Jack explains a section of his dog house (see photo of Jack lowering the piece of wood): "This is like a door and it lowers and closes."

Sanding Wood

Austin and Jack move on to sand some pieces of wood. Gigi joins them, and later Evelyn. As the children work, they make note of certain properties of the materials they are working with. 

Austin describes the texture of the sandpaper: "There's little teeth on this."
Jack going through wood observes a clue about which wood needs or doesn't need sanding: "This one is smooth now already." He moves on to sand another piece of wood.
Gigi picks up a piece of wood to sand: "And this is heavy."

As children make these observations and discoveries about materials, they are building an understanding and language about these materials that they will utilize in these and other experiences later. 

Message Delivery & Discovery

Creating and delivering messages to the homeless continues to be such an important experience for the children. Today another group brought more messages to Blake Hall. During the delivery, Rachael who was also with the group, discovered a list of names  our visitors left for us!

Knowing the children have been asking about the names of our visitors, Rachael read the names to the children. The children were excited and this information served as a way of building connection and relationship to the people staying in our building overnight. 

Making More Messages

Sewing

Sewing was also available today. As it sometimes happens, we ran into some technical difficulties with our sewing machine (possibly as it has seen A LOT of use across classrooms lately!) So the biggest takeaway from our sewing time today was patience. Patience to wait and see if we could get the machine working again, patience to try a variety of solutions, and patience for a turn.

Lane, who was waiting for a turn, had a great response and invited other friends, "Let's make another plan while we wait." Grace D. made the plan of working on her shiny hand-sewing piece. In the end, only Maren had a chance with the machine today but our magic list continues making sure we'll all get to work on our sewing projects. 

Outdoor Classroom

During our outdoor time Austin, Grace M., and Jack created a game of swinging and landing. They had a challenge going to see who could land and reach the farthest. Other friends created a store selling delicious food.