october 2022
The school age children have been continuing their storytelling from previous weeks but representing it in different forms. Previously, the children mainly told stories through the story board and through different toys but this week we saw new development in story telling through puppet shows and drawing! E has been compiling many of his drawings over the past weeks and decided this week to put them all together to create a comic book. "I'm making the cover for my comic book" -E. E has been recreating stories that already exist along with creating his own. A and M have also been creating books and creating stories to tell their friends! "Mine is about mermaids!" -Av. M folded her paper in half and drew a picture on it and split the pictures and words on both sides of the paper. "Look! The story changes on both sides" -M.
C also created some stories this week and told the story as she drew a picture. "This person is going to the store to go pick some food up" -C. As C's drawing got more intricate, her story had additional details. The drawing continued with the story which resulted in a detailed drawing. N has been representing stories through drawings and draws different actions of the story in a single panel. The characters N draws go through different motions of action on one page and when looking at his page you can see how his story develops.
The school age children develop stories with pictures and some written words demonstrating finding meaningful topics to use when storytelling and writing with increasing complexity. This developed form of representation is shown through their drawings with increasing detail and thought. We're so excited to see all the stories the children develop!
The school age children have also been continuing their building ideas and focusing more on tracks and tunnels. With tracks being put into the room we saw more complex developments of the tracks the children were building last week. Continuing to use the blocks to guide their tracks, the children built their tracks over tables and extended the tracks to attempt to create free standing tracks. "Do you think it'll balance if we put them over the sand table?" -E. "We can try and if the cars fall they won't fall on the ground and break since the sand is there" -Ar. The children tested out the limits of the tracks and the cars by using more force to create more speed and testing the stability of the tracks when balancing them on blocks. "It's so high!" -J. I tested out the track by seeing how much weight it could hold. I pushed the car down on the track to test the strength and as he saw the track giving out, he would decrease the pressure being put on the tracks.
The children also tested out the relationship between speed and height. With a giant tube being added to the room the children held the tube at different heights to see how toy cars and balls would react. "Look how fast the ball goes if I put it up higher" -Ar. "We need someone taller to hold the tube so the cars can go down faster" -Am. With this understanding, the children were able to problem solve how to get the cars and balls out that were stuck in the middle of the tube. "We need to make it go faster so it doesn't get stuck" -Av. The children also attempted to use the outside of the tube to try to balance cars on it. "The car keeps falling off" -C. After a few attempts, the children concluded the tube was too round to have cars balance on top of and continued to use the inside of the tubes as it seemed more effective. "It's not working . Let's just use the inside." -J.
Jen Kesner RECE, Bobbi Abraham RECE, Mackenzie Crawford Eade