Wednesday, March 3rd 2022

Refining our Guardians

As part of the process for creating our St. John's guardians, we broke into small groups to focus on the individual guardians. Our groups discussed what made each guardian unique. By sharing our ideas, we built our communication and empathy skills as a collaborated on a complex idea. Each of the members had different ideas about what made the guardian special to them. By listening to their peers in the discussion, the children were about to respectfully agree on the specificities of their group's guardian.

"It has to connect all the kids ideas. It's not just for one kid." - Lily

The Human Guardian

How does it move?
Lily: It has wings.
Franny: It has legs so it can walk when it doesn't fly
Remy: Fairy wings
Cate: Cloud wings

What makes it special?
Cate: It protects with a flower sword. The stem is the (handle) and the flower is the sword
Remy: It has a flower crown

The group uses a book about fairies as a resources to build on their knowledge

Cate: It has a flower dress
Lily: They can have leafy clothes.

They find a page with fairies that complements their ideas

Everyone: I love this dress!
Franny: It could be beautiful and white
Lily: You can make it out of flowers

Lily created a fairy guardian and adds Cate's flower sword idea. She decided to model the wings after fairies she's seen in books.

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Remy gives her fairy a diamond studded dress based on the costumes she and Cate have at home

Cate creates two designs, adding Remy's crown and her sword idea.

Franny focuses on the guardian's dress

Franny: I like the color of my dress because it's beautiful
Lily: It's a good mix of colors. It's sparkly. Very nice

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The Message Guardian

What Materials will we use?
Jill - Let’s think about what would make this a perfect message center guardian.  What materials could we use to let people know that it protects the message center?
Jade - Paper.  Bricks and a box (Jade is thinking about strong materials for the guardian).  
Finlay - Scissors!  
Jade - Glue.
Wilder - Plastic, pens.  
Jade - Crayons.  Symbols.  Like maybe you can put funny symbols that people don’t use and we can glue them on.  Or you could take really old staplers or glue sticks that don’t work or empty glue bottles.

Finlay - I have an idea.  Maybe the ears could be ginkgo leaves.
Lucas - The guardian will protect the messages.  It can have scissors for the arms and if anyone comes to ruin the messages, he will stop them.  
Jade - Beads.
Wilder - Buttons.  
Lucas - And crinkly papers.
Jade - Stickers.    
Wilder - And long paper (strips).
Jade - And ribbons.
  
While drawing:
Jade - (To Wilder) That looks like a cool guardian.  (Working on her guardian). It has to have a blue body.  
Finlay - Guardians guard treasure.  (Indicating his drawing) This is my guardian.  These (on the top) are pencils.  His arms are scissors.  He only eats robbers.  

Finlay guardian with scissor hands

Lucas thinks about crinkly papers as he designs his guardian

Jade's blue guardian

Wilder's guardian is made of message materials

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The Clay Guardian

What is the guardian made of?

Bea:  I think it would be made of plastic. A certain type of plastic with color
Capers:  It could look like this (he points to the badge on his police costume). An eagle
Luke: Clay and then it turn hard
Capers tries to combine his peers ideas
Capers: It could be made of wood or clay. 
Bea: Yea. Plastic and clay and wood could be together.

What makes the guardian special

Capers: It could have a scary face.
Luke: It could look like a tiger
Capers: A tiger with a scary face.
Bea: It talks nicely but scares bad guys away. It looks big and strong

How does it move?

Bea: It has a snake tail but it doesn't slither. It walks
Luke: It stomps with its feet. 
Capers: No it runs.
Jordan: Can it run and stomp and walk if it has legs?
Capers attempts to do all three
Capers: Yes. It can do all of them if it has 2 legs.

This version of Bea's guardian has a rainbow snake tail, big shoes and a scary face so bad guys don't hurt the clay.

Capers' version is based off kiln gods we research and is riding a tiger

Luke's guardian is surrounded by a family of suns.

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Lily and Cate joined the group and the group shared their ideas. Once Lily and Cate understood what the group had come up with so far, they create addition designs to help.

Cate's guardian has 2 snake tails and lots of arms.

Lily's guardian has a rainbow snake tail and 10 scary eyes