Building community and relationships 9/6/07

Building in new ways - four-year-old class
Observing the work that has been going on in the classroom, we wondered how we could link it to an experience in the atelier. One strong interest among the children has been the block area. We wondered if we could use this interest as a foundation to challenge and push their thinking in a new way. What if we offered the provocation of having the children build but with a new medium - clay?  We felt that this medium would stimulate many interesting questions and cause the children to discover new strategies for working with a familiar material in this new way.

Some of the questions we asked ourselves were:

Would a child who hasn't spent much time building with blocks enjoy building with this medium?
What strategies would we see the children use as they figured out how to "build" in clay?
Would they know how to build? 
Would building with clay help them to understand another property about this material? 
Would the children know how to use a tool both for cutting the clay to create "blocks" and for solving problems in their construction process? 
How would the children react to clay presented in this way?
What would our role be in supporting the children in this process?

This week, two small groups met in the atelier.  They were given rolled-out slabs of clay on which they could imprint, clay tools for cutting, and slip or clay glue to glue the cut pieces together.  Next week, I will write about the things that the children noticed and the learning process that they went through to deal with this new way to use clay.

Self-portraits - three-year-old class

The experience of creating a self-portrait reveals the power of observation and the qualities most important to the author.  Children readily identify with their own unique image, often captivated and surprised by their own expressions.  The connection between self and image is a discovery that continues throughout our lifetime.  At MPI we value the self-portrait process, and the children work on one every year through grade five.  As many of you read last week, this process began with one child's interest in another child's work and has spread through to our three-year-old class, bringing with it a celebration of self and our community!

Please visit the classroom's atelier to see your child's self-portrait as it is completed.  The children also continue to explore and investigate with the easel and fingerpainting.

Kindergarten

This week the children began a unit on clay.  For some children this is revisiting a material they worked with last year, while for others it is a whole new material.  We begin this unit with pinch pots and coil pots to help the children begin to understand some of the properties of clay.  The children are not introduced to clay tools until they are very cabable of using their own hands as the tools. The clay is cold and grey and from the earth, and the children have to use gross and fine motor skills to work with it, pinching and rolling and connecting.  This a great way for the children to begin to understand the way that clay might break if you push too hard or how it might fall apart if the clay is not thick enough. Below is a photo of some of the pinch and coil pots.

Posted on September 6, 2007 9:03 AM | Permalink