Historias del Juego: Visitando al Dentista y Cuidando al Bebé

¡Buenos días!

Saludos from the midst of a happy, functioning, playful classroom: there's a student playing the toy ukulele and another two pretend feeding our pet rat cookies (that are, in fact, heart-shaped crayons we baked last week); in blocks, one student has made a Grecian-style house with lots of columns and a rooftop shower and another has walled a gorilla in a bunkbed to protect her from "los zombies."

I wanted to take a moment to record two Historias del Juego en particular that I've had back-logged for ages. Both are in my afternoon session - a rowdier, more social group.

1. Visitando al Dentista:
I had recently introduced a Tupperware full of shells but hadn't seen a lot of play with them. I was considering emptying out the sensory table and filling it with sand (though I think I'm going to try to hold off until after spring break for that one), when I found four students busily engaged. One student was reclined on the top of the aforementioned sensory table on her back; two were sorting through the shells and another basket of containers; and the fourth had appointed himself the medical professional in the situation.
 
"Y éste, necesitamos," he declared, grabbing a cupped shell. He pressed it along the "patient's" belly, listening to the tops of the shells and generally auscultando todo.
Another student, inspired by this, grabbed a long kelp seed pod and knelt on the table next to the patient. "Abre la boca," he requested, poking the pod near her teeth, counting them, and hemming and hawing to himself.
After a couple of minutes, he switched places with the reclined patient and the former patient became a dentist.
"Hmmm," she said, "Okay. Open!"
And he opened his mouth. She repeated the routine - at one point, when she was brandishing the spout of a play teapot at his teeth, he hesitated. "Open wide," she said, "está bien." After a bit, the current patient exclaimed, "Quiero agua!"
The two assistants ran to get him a cup of water.
A little later, one of the assistants was examining imagined mouth detritus under our play microscope. He murmured under his breath, finally saying, "Estas.... estas son grandes."

Takeaways: What a creative and cool re-purposing of objects! Let students' imaginations run wild; be careful not to police their productive and cooperative play, even if you wouldn't have them ideally be lying on top of the sensory table or putting old bits of kelp near their mouths. Also, when you assign children to play areas and/or rotate them through after 10-15min, you rarely see this sort of cooperative, deeper play that lasts 25+ minutes.
Next steps: Perhaps create a doctor's or dentist's or vet's office in Ciencia or Casa.
Types of play: Symbolic, Socio-dramatic, Social, Object

2. Cuidando al Bebé
Another day, three students from the afternoon were busy parenting a little stuffed koala.



 

They were carrying him around, giving him food, wrapping a blankie around his legs and belly. (Just to check, in case you stereotyped, they were three boys playing this game.)
Student 1: ¡Ew, hizo popo!
The kids flew into a flurry of action: they lay down the koala, took off the blankie, began wiping away with imaginary toallitas.  One wrinkled his nose; another sang an improvised lullaby to the koala.
Me: "¿Están cambiando el pañal?"
Student 2: Sí!
Then, cleaned to their satisfaction, they all snuggled up on the couch with the koala and pretended to go to sleep.
Student 2: (as a whispered aside to me with his eyes closed) ¡Somos la familia durmiendo!

Takeaways: Let the kids play! ...And a brief soapbox moment: A lot of time I see folks worried about boys doing this type of play. They view it as effeminate, inappropriate, gay.  Then there's a whole subsection that argues that "it doesn't mean they're gay at all!" I agree with this second sentiment, but think we need to also stop framing it as "we can let them do this because don't worry they'll turn out straight heteronormative masculinity is intact phewwww." You know what? They might be gay. And they might not. But either way, learning how to care for littles is an unadulteratedly great thing. 
Next Steps: I feel pretty proud how I've built up Casa in response to student-led games like these:



I've added more animals, actual dolls, and a blanket that in addition to being adorable is a more appropriate size than the enormous magenta cobija I had before. Though, I do think my cardboard cuna needs an upgrade.

Types of Play: Symbolic, Socio-dramatic, Social, Object

Now the ukulele player is building a marble run castle, a student in a blue hat is laying out a blanket (and another is pulling out play money to purchase it).... and a whole block civilization has risen up.
 
 See?

Well, it's about to be sacked like Rome: time to clean up!

¡Hasta pronto!

Emerging Emergent Curriculum Documentation

¡Hello, Lectores, y feliz año nuevo!

I have a few minutes before our afternoon of professional development; let's see if I can get in an overview of what I'm up to in the emergent curriculum documentation department.

First off, read this neat article about an adorable pre-k class and their goldfish. Page 4 has a great overview on the components and value of documentation. As Lewin-Benham notes:

Documentation is the process

of recording children’s thoughts

and actions on a topic to maintain

their focus and expand their interest.

See? Neat!

After reading this, I decided to incorporate this concept into my Professional Development Plan.




 Okay, I'll admit it: I love writing Vygotskian (even when I spell it wrong, ha). I noted in my PDP that I wanted to use poster boards and have additional board space in the hallway.

So I got a couple foam boards and premiered this documentation feature with our Acorn Study.

 

I crafted these over the course of a couple of weeks -- beginning with the students' descriptions, then the photograph, then the art, then the post-reflections. The poster board sat in or near circle at all times, and I added to it with the students present.

There were immediate advantages to documentation:
1. Students could revisit the unit.
2. Students were thrilled when their words / images / art were added to the board.
3. It was always accessible.

But there were also disadvantages:
1. Foam boards are ungaingly!
2. Where the heck was I going to put those million foam boards?

So I stressed and complained to my EA... And then we got our brains cooking! We took down all of the art from the bulletin board near our Música/Teatro center and put it back up around the room. Then, she titled the board Otoño and divided it down the middle - half for my AM class, half for my PM one.

Instead of writing directly onto the bulletin board, then, I wrote (modeling better stay-within-the-lines literacy too) in a notebook and showed it to students. My EA took pictures, and sometimes additional notes. Then, I would print the pictures along with student observations and captions, and put them on the board.

 
Some of the events featured:

•  Students building the scarecrow from La Viejecita Que No Le Tenía Miedo a Nada
• Student summaries from the short animated film about Día de Los Muertos. Watch it and weep everywhere.
• Voting for favorite Jack-O-Lantern expressions
• Creating our leaf graphic
• Our pumpkin seed seasoning recipes

At the same time, I put out a request for children's shoe boxes. When we wrapped up our Otoño unit, then, I had a handy place for manipulative/story prop/thematic object storage!
 
(CHECK that homemade memory game using leaf types from our mini-arboretum by our school.)
Following a fab idea from my EA, we can then store those boxes in different play areas. This one, for instance, is stored in Ciencia. 

After the conclusion of the unit, then, my EA moved the board contents to the hallway and readied the board for our Winter unit:












This way, students have easy access to review our current unit -- and can review the past one as we trundle to and from outside and indoor gym play.

Next steps:

• Color pictures?
• More student art!
• More 3D media (a la the bellotas on my foam board)
• Build in a weekly time for each student to review the unit during free play.

¡Me quedan 3 minutos antes de la junta, entonces me voy!
Gracias por leer!
Thanks for reading!