friendly signs

With so much construction going on at Sabot, there are many signs pointing out what not to do and where people should not go. I wondered what young children would think if I asked them about making some friendly signs to hang up.
Here is their conversation, held as they were drawing images for the signs.

Anna "Could we make some friendly signs or some 'yes' signs?"
Ju. "Yeah, like you can bring a dog. Or, please have a nice dog and not a mean dog. Cause a mean dog might get the fragile stuff like me and Duke's special boat. I know you need signs, cause Duke started putting signs so the cleaners wouldn't throw away the big (cardboard) pirate boat.

Ja. "I want to say 'please draw'"



M. "How about 'play the guitar'?"
L. I wanna say please have beds, so I can sleep in the grass."
Ju. Sleepover with Sabot?"
L."Please be comfy on the grass'

L. I know! "Please have good manners"
M. Please slow down"
Ja. "I want to say 'play the guitar' on one."
M. "I said 'hug'. Anna "Can you write the letters for hug? H-U-G"
M. H..........U..........I can't do a G.
Ju. "I can! Let me show you how"

                                               "Be comfy on the grass"

"Please bring nice dogs only, and keep them on a leash so they don't jump up on children"



Next, we will show the sign ideas at circle to see if anybody else in the class has suggestions or sign ideas of their own. Eventually, I would like to hang the signs around the school, and then around the city. Can you imagine walking through Richmond and seeing a child-made sign that says 'Please draw here'?

                                       

How to Make Seats for a Ferris Wheel

Most of the Meadow room children feel finished with their little Ferris Wheels and are ready to make a big one. The teachers said to the children;
"We asked Pippin if he thinks you could make a real Ferris Wheel, because we thought it might be too hard. But he said he thinks we can do it!"

Ja. That's cause he's a building man.

How can you make a seat that would show Pippin the right size for a child's Ferris wheel?

An. It has to be the size of that chair (points to a chair in the room).
Ja. It has to be a cage so we can stay stabled. So we won't fall out.
children- Yep, It has to have seat belts. A door. Maybe another door. A seat needs lots of stuff.

Ac. I've rode on a real Ferris wheel, and it has bars that go up and down. The bars go up and down for the people to get out.

Je. I saw that on a chair lift!

B. I saw it on a roller coaster. When you put your hands up, it goes... boom!

Ac.  A man comes to wiggle the bar to make sure the seat belt is tight.

An. It has to have a roof, in case it rains.
Ca. You get to have a ride... you have to have a buckle, and when you click it on, the man just pushes the controller.

Ac. Maybe we can take (our model seat) to show Pippin after this!

Teacher "How can we make sure our Ferris wheel plan has a seat that's the right size for a real child?"

An. We need to measure it from a real chair.

Ac.We need lines on the back so you don't fall out. Let's see if I can get it (my wire) around the chair. No, it's not long enough. Maybe we should try it for real with one of the Meadow roomers in it.

Ac. Wow! I'm really not falling out now! We have to do the bottom, guys.
Ja. (measuring wire to cut a piece) The wire needs to be the same size as me. Not too tight, just the same size. (Robyn holds the wire up to him and they cut) We can tie it around (the bottom of the seat).

After weaving all of that wire for the seat bottom and back of the seat, each child sat in it to try it before they went to eat snack. They noticed it was still a little springy and pokey. Ja. noticed it needed a place to put your feet. We will come back to it this week.

Buckling the seat belt

the seat belt works!


The model seat and seat belt

glasses

Happy Friday!

Snake Trap

a tube or tunnel connects the houses



click on an image if you want to see it bigger

Messy Hand Kids!

Martin Luther King Day

"If you believe that others are a source of your learning, identity and knowledge, you have opened an important door to the joy of being together.  We are not separated by our differences but connected by them. It is because of my difference that I am useful to you because I offer another perspective."

                                            

Carlina Rinaldi in The Hundred Languages of Children third edition

The Hundred Languages of Children, third edition is here!

The Hundred Languages of Children 3rd edition is full of inspiration and ideas, as all of the books are. For me, reading these kinds of books is a way to shake off weariness and renew my capability for "the art of becoming surprised and amazed by children" and what they can teach me about teaching and about being.        
(Loris Malaguzzi)


For a while now I have been trying to understand more about documentation and its role in learning for children, parents and teachers, as well as its potential to make political change. Learning to use pedagogical documentation is one of those things that requires lots of time for trying, reflecting, and trying again. In light of moving out of preschool to work with older children, I especially want to figure out if documentation should or can be used in primary and middle school.


Part three of the book is called 'Documentation as an Integrated Process of Observing, Reflecting and Communicating'... just what I need! Here are some quotes;


Brenda Fyfe talks about documentation as valuable for emphasizing children's thinking and processes of meaning making, and for helping children learn to self assess their own processes.

Gunilla Dahlberg writes that documentation "promotes the idea of the school as a place of democratic political practice by enabling citizens, young and old, to engage with important issues such as childhood, child care, education, and knowledge. It opens up a public space, a forum in civic society, where dominant discourses can be visualized and negotiated." 


"As a tool for assessment and evaluation, pedagogical documentation represents and extremely strong antidote to the proliferation of assessment and evaluation tools that have become ever more anonymous and decontextualized -objective and democratic in appearance only. The language of evaluation -namely, the language of standards and accountability... builds on a highly administrative rationality, a rationality seeking the best methods and procedures for delivering a predefined body of knowledge with predetermined outcomes... instead, documentation is an alternative language of evaluation -the language of meaning making." 


These are fighting words in an era of standards and standardized testing. Even so, this book is focused on early childhood education. We will have to struggle with the question of documentation and its role in elementary and middle grades a while longer. Maybe the answers will be revealed when I read the rest of the book!