Friday, January 31, 2020

Children's
​Choice

We returned to "Children's Choice" this afternoon offering up some options for our day. Children chose to work with clay, build in construction, and prepare materials for future sewing experiences. Throughout, the value of the children's relationships with one another was evident.

Clay Workshop

In clay, children had the opportunity for open clay exploration as well as preparing slabs of clay for a future sewing experience. For those preparing slabs, they did so by putting holes through the clay using straws.

In open clay, Maren and Lane worked together (see photos in top row of the following grid):

Lane: "This is the baby tiger being baptized."
Maren: "Now we have to make the grown up (tiger) house."
Lane: "Do you want to connect them at the tippy top?"
Maren: "Yes."
The children combined their pieces of clay.
​Lane: "How do you like our church?"

"This is the baby tiger being baptized." -Lane

Community of Construction

During construction, children worked off of one another's ideas, chose to work close in proximity to one another, and gradually combined ideas as they continued to work. In the end, they built individual constructions which were connected both physically (with materials) and in story. Read the captions in the following slideshow for more of their process. 

Relationships
throughout
​our work today

During meeting, Sam shared about the house he had built in KW yesterday:

Sam: "So, this is my house...and all the people I know. This is the back, (pointing at the rooms built in the back of the house) so there are people in the back."
(Pointing at cracks between the curved design on the front of the house.) "In these little cracks are sharks."
"Right in the back is my bedroom and I'm sharing my bedroom..."
Jack: "With me!"
Sam: "Yes, and Clare is sharing her bedroom with Austin."

Sam seems to use his constructed house as a symbol of his close relationships and as a tool for his emotions. He talked about the building of his house, explaining he built the house because he was missing his mom and it made him forget about that.

While Lane, Maren, and Lou Lou build together, they have moments of celebration about their ideas. Including a spontaneous group hug (second two photos). They shout: "Hug and jump!"

Getting ready for a photo with their construction work, Lane calls to everyone:
"Let's all hug together!"

Continuing next week...

Maren and Lane began drilling holes in pieces of wood for future sewing work today. Our drill unexpectedly ran out of charge so we're looking forward to continuing this and other work next week.