March 30th, 2023

Polar Bear Room

After a short break, we have returned to continue the construction on our Tucker Room Connected House project. This week, the POLAR BEAR ROOM team, consisting of Lucas, Remy, Lily an Frannie, began their work by considering the placement in the already existent connected house structure, planning out the layout and measurements of the room and choosing the materials to construct it.

Lucas: We need a blueprint so we know the plan how to make it.
Lily: Does the structure need to look exactly like the blueprint?
Remy: It’s an idea but if you have another idea and we see how it looks in our head we can do it. (draft) We need to think about the blueprint before we write it.

Lily: (about the base) It should be a rectangle.

Frannie: The top is opened because so we can play with it.
Lucas: It’s closed but it’s cold inside and there’s a machine that makes snow.
​I have not seen one but I’ve heard of it. 
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Lily: I think there should be a part for ice skates and where you put your shows.
Remy: We should have cubbies. And there’s a door for the real ice skates (to enter the ice rink)
Remy: There’s enough cubbies for every single child in this class and there’s little name tags that have our names on them and there’s long name tags for long names.   

Polar Bear Room Design by Frances (above)

​Lily's ice skate and shoe cubbies designs with personalized cubby tags (below)

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When deciding where to best place the next room in the Connected House, the children inspected and measured the available spaces. Their findings also influenced their choices for the shape of the room.

Width: How wide it is (Lily)
Height: How tall it is (Lily)
Length: How long it is (Lucas)

​Lily, Remy and Frances documented the group's measurements:
Height 11 1/2
Length 23
Width 6 1/2

​Inspired by our previous work around house construction, remembering the properties of clay and the tools they had used, the children decided to use clay to construct the polar bear room.  

​We used clay because my clay house is a snow house and we're trying to make it look like the same. We used the print, a snowflake print.
​Clay would be good. We can paint it blue for the ice. - Frances
See through blue. - Lucas
It's kind of the easiest to shape. Because we need to make it. - Lily

In addition to the space in the connected house, we also measured the diameter of the kiln to ensure the room will be able to fit inside for the firing process. 

17 (inches) is the maximum that we can go! - Lily
So that it can go in the kiln. - Remy
Like my doll house. - Frannie (comparing it to the shape and size of her first clay house)

​Remy: We need a base first. Maybe we could hang strings from the top and add paper snowflakes and we use string and make a hole and add a knot on the top and it looks like it’s snowing. 

Everyone shared Remy's interest in adding snowflakes to the polar bear room. To take a closer look at snowflakes we inspected images of snowflakes seen through a microscope before drawing our own snowflakes on tracing paper to ensure they will be visible from both sides when we hang them up above the room:
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Remy: This one has a star in the middle and this one is a hexagon in the middle. (identifying geometric shapes in the snowflakes)
Lily: So no one looks the same?
Remy: They’re all shapes and sizes. Frannie and I made the same one but they don’t look the same at all.
Frannie: Yes, because I added icicles. The sides are different. 

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Unique is when no person is the same. - Remy

When looking at the images of snowflakes the children identified different geometric shapes, such as hexagons, triangles, squares and diamonds. Inspired by the beautiful shapes that nature creates, we used a shape stencil for our snowflake creations. 

Remy: That’s incredible! (to Lucas about his snowflake design)
Lucas: I can only see one thing at a time (in his imagination when he closes his eyes).
Remy: I’m thinking of little squares in my head.
Lucas: A rectangle and then a line. Attach a line.

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Using his imagination to create his own unique snowflake, Lucas closed his eyes between every step to "see" what he should add next. 

Lucas's process of creating a snowflake

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​snowflakes created by Remy, Frannie, Lucas and Lily:

We will continue the construction of the house in the coming days. We invite you to check out our process when you come in in the morning. Remy, Lily, Lucas and Frannie will be excited to share more about their work with you!