Building together

The Keshet children found a very large basket of magna-tiles when they arrived this morning.  We saw various individuals and groups doing a lot of experimenting with them.    There were multi level buildings where each floor contained open space, solid towers, AND a superhero rescue from the top of a tower.  Last but not least, it seems that Ethan may have created a new wing for the Natick Collection!

Focus, determination, and teamwork were all evident as the children worked.  Physics lessons are learned in our experimentation as well.

Dyad Play

The Rainbow teachers continue to find ways to support the children in their move from parallel play to dyad play, or playing in pairs. We are delighted to see how they can work together toward a common goal. We help a child initiate play with another by providing the language. "Rose, can I help you build the tower?". During the course of play, one child may misinterpret the actions of the other. We work to help her to express the way she wants to play: "Josh, I want to put the monkey in our building. Can we put him in here?".

Today Josh and Rose wanted to build a tower. They started by putting the little monkey inside the bottom floor. The pair was able to cooperatively stack floor after floor until they had created a skyscraper! You certainly get a sense of their feeling of accomplishment in their happy smiles.

Look! It Sticks!

Yesterday Ezra found a paper clip at home and realized it stuck to his magnet tiles! He was so excited he brought it in to class today to show everyone. We passed the paper clip and a magnet tile around so that everyone had a chance to see that they stuck together. I asked why did they stick, and Hannah answered, "because it's metal!" I was so impressed that she knew! I asked the class if the paper clip would stick to the cabinet because the cabinet is also metal. The class didn't think it would but we tried it anyway. Then we put a magnet tile on the cabinet and realized that they stuck! During play time Eli and Jacob made a beautiful picture on the cabinet out of the magnet tiles. Thanks Ezra for sharing your discovery with our class! It helped inspire a great conversation and some fun new ways to play with magnet tiles!

Parallel and then... cooperative

Wow! What started as individual projects being created at different spots on the rug evolved as time passed...

into some cooperative group play. When we discussed what they were building, it became clear that the kids had a plan for walls and a roof to be completed before adding another story to their creation.

One of the things we are working on as a staff is supporting kids as they negotiate the means to enter ongoing play and to share materials in a friendly way. We supply them with language to help them explain their intention or desire to play with the other children as well as to help them express their feelings as the play progresses. It's as simple as "You can tell Emily - I'm using this square for the wall." - but for a two year old child who's upset that someone else is trying to take her block, it's a reflex to whine in protest and squirm away. When the script is provided by a teacher, the child visibly relaxes and explains the problem to her peer.