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While Kenn was in the studio with his airplanes the boys in Joanne's room were in their block corner. Their structures put together their learning about maps and blocks with an interest in sea life, and became an interactive story about sharks. It's one thing to build a structure, but now their dramatic play in the block area incorporates their understanding of the usefulness of maps. So, it's block construction, story telling, dramatic play, math and science.
 | "I made a car that moves with a garage on top of it. I also made two houses and one has a telephone on top of it. Mary (age 5) |
We had to expand on our idea of using one tray to display the artwork. At first we just followed along as Kenn added more and more trays to his airport.
 | This is an airport. It's really big, and there's three trays connected together. There's a restaurant and a bridge, (actually there's two restaurants). There are three towers with red lights with red lights on top of them so the airplanes won't crash. There are airplanes and busses too. There's this truck, and the packages go up the truck ramp. And a man is in the plane where the packages go. Kenn (age 5) |
During the course of the year the children in Joanne's room were fascinated by all different kinds of maps. This display documented the history and course of their map study. It began with crude treasure maps, and led to maps that told stories and to maps that became an interactive element to their play. These boys are acting out being chased by sharks in their boats, and they are drawing maps to show where the sharks are.
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The Styrofoam blocks that Kenn used reminded us of the wooden blocks that we had in our classrooms, and since we knew that we would soon run out of Styrofoam blocks we talked about bringing the blocks out of the classroom, and adding them to the materials already in the studio. In a way we were taking the lead of the children who had already merged the classroom and studio materials, and hoping that successful classroom block experiences would lead to more interesting studio work. To us this was a major innovation, but the children didn't blink. They easily integrated the blocks into their work and ultimately abandoned the trays in favor of elaborate block constructions.
 | "Welcome to water world, this is where you get your tickets, and here is the pool with waterslides and people on floats. Here is the Jacuzzi, and the door to the Jacuzzi. There's a dressing room with lockers and a place to hang your coat. There's a high dive, and we just cut the ribbon on the new diving board."
Taurus and Richard (age 5) |
The resulting work in the studio successfully combined all of the elements that we had introduced and developed over the three month history of the project. The teachers felt successful in their understanding of the interests of the children, and in the clarity and complexity of the ideas they expressed.