Cave of Wonders

Inspired by the fantastic Teacher Tom and his blog entry on a "light and dark den,"  I started begging my parents for dark colored sheets and disco balls for my vision of how I could replicate this in someway.   When I finally had a few sheets and had rounded up some Christmas bulbs that were quite reminiscent of disco balls (and one "modern" light disco ball to be used at a later date), I assembled this cave under the train table.  I had to leave the little hole in the front so that I can see what is going on in there, for safety reasons and because of regulations.

Inside there were a slew of pillows, three mini disco balls attached to the underside of the table in a way conducive to spinning, some glow in the dark stars and moons on the underside of the table (also a parent donation), and three flashlights.

They were mesmerized by the light reflecting off the mirrored balls....

... and the patterns made on the walls, "ceiling," and floor....

They made shadows on the wall and told ghost stories.

Stories about kid- eating bears...

and even a scary story about "bloody bones" passed down from Dad.

And when it was time for lunch, they begged for more time in the cave, and were only convinced to leave with promises of doing it again this after noon and the next day.

It was a place of discovery, a place to bond, a place to escape, and a place to enjoy a little bit of quiet.

The kids called it a "cave," and I jokingly called it a "cave of wonders,"  but that is what stuck with them, and we cannot wait to spend more time in the cave of wonders tomorrow.  :-)

Failure: Not something to be discounted

As adults, we are afraid of failure and often are more than willing to pass this fear on to children.  Luckily, the world of adults and the world of kids are, well, worlds apart.

Today my class decided, (while playing on the balance beam), that they didn't want to walk on the balance beam, they wanted to "swim" under the balance beam like a "bridge."  Since the balance beam is about three inches off the floor, this made for an interesting proposition.


Miss Elizabeth, can we make the balance beam higher so we can swim under it?
Yes, what are you going to use?


Failure #1:  A dispute erupts: Some children want to use chairs, others want to use blocks.  Screaming starts, and I step in as a mediator.
"How do you think we can decide whether to use blocks or chairs?"
Eenie Meenie Miney Mo!
A vote!
"Should we use Eenie Meenie Miney Mo, or vote?"
Vote! 
You have to love democracy. Finally after taking a vote, it is decided that they will use chairs first.  A few "you're not coming to my birthday"s and "I don't want to play anymore"s, and the children with chairs were on their way.


Failure #2: They tried putting chairs under either end of the balance beam at first, but couldn't get the balance beam to stay on them. After witnessing the first failure, the children who wanted blocks decided to come back offering a different way to use the chairs:


Failure #3:  They tried resting the balance beam on a row of chairs, but then they couldn't crawl under because the space between the chair legs was too narrow.


Failure #4:  The initial craftsmenship of the the blocks that would support the balance beam was far too shaky to actually support it even for a second.

Failure #5:  The new, more stable block supports, in actuality did not make the balance beam much higher at all, at least not tall enough to crawl under.

Success! They put the supports that the balance beam comes with on top of the the block supports and are able to crawl under the "bridge."  

Failure #6:  One child insisted on lifting up one end to put more blocks under to make it higher which resulted in the demolition to the end shown below.  Angry voices shouted "hey stop!"  "you're breaking it!" Still, the builder continued, until Daisy walked over and said, "look over there.  You are breaking that end," while pointing to the damaged end, "can you please stop doing that?"  The demolisher stopped and helped to repair the other end.  They rebuilt the broken end and made the ends level again.  

It is very hard, sometimes, as an adult to not jump in and help.  It is hard not to "just show them" how to put the balance beam on blocks so that it is high enough to crawl under.  It is hard not to jump in and stop the child who is demolishing one end of the supports.  However, if I had stepped in to help the first time that the balance beam could not be supported by their designs, what would they have learned?  They would have learned that grown ups can do it.  That's it.  

Because they were allowed to do it themselves, they worked together on a group goal.  They used communication and conflict resolution skills; once they had help to resolve a conflict, but they resolved a major conflict on their own and several smaller conflicts on their own as well.  They learned many, many principles of building, and enhanced their spacial understanding.  They had to deal with principles of balance and cause and effect.  

Whenever a child "fails" or "does it wrong,"  they learn to do it better; they eliminate a possibility, and go on to a new attempt or possibility.  Sometimes they implement their new understanding immediately, and sometimes, they store the information for another day.  Still other times, they need to repeat the same thing to fully understand.  This process is important, and it is an age old practice:  trial and error.  

This endurance, this perseverence, we can only hope will stay with them when they face adversity, adversity that everyone has to face in one form or another as a youngster or an adult.  We hope that in letting THEM make mistakes and seeing achievement rise from those mistakes, that they will carry this lesson with them, that they will have a undying belief and confidence in themselves that will carry them through their lifetime.  

Blogs and articles on related topics:

Habits by Teacher Tom

Evolution of Paintings and the Painter (Little Busy Bodies)

Time to play: the vital connection between play and learning

Praising Children, Risking Failure by Janet Lansbury

Everything I know about parenting I learned from Mythbusters by Kevin Makice  (I believe it was KJ who pointed me to this blog)

For those of you wondering what happened after the "final" achievement of building the bridge, they celebrated and crawled under it for about two minutes; It was, after all, all about the process.  "We really just needed a boat to sit on, so the sharks don't eat us."  They told me, as they all sat on the balance beam.  

ice, failure, spiders, and pests

Do you ever have times when the "lesson" you planned for a paticular day completely flops?  It doesn't happen to me very often, but whenever it does I am always surprised that something ALWAYS emerges from that failure.
Today, I had planned a big ice activity (I will spare all of the details until this project is successful).   We put containers with water outside and I asked for a hypothesis about what would happen.  There were two answers:  1. The water would evaporate  and 2.  It would turn into ice.  However, when we checked it an hour and a half later NOTHING had happened, (although the children astutely observed that the water got really cold).  The reason?  The temperature outside was 33 degrees.  SERIOUSLY?  33 DEGREES?  I was frustrated.  Why didn't it freeze, Miss Elizabeth?  Well, it seems it is not quite cold enough outside.  It feels cold to us!  Yes, it is cold but it needs to be a little colder, 32 degrees, to freeze, and I just checked the thermometer and it is 33 degrees.  Do you think we should leave it overnight and see if it freezes?  YES!!
Surprisingly, they weren't frustrated by this, and didn't seem to mind waiting until tomorrow.

We went back inside and play resumed as usual.  I set to work hanging clothes line across the ceiling to hang pictures up on.  Apparently, according to "the regs" I have too much art on the walls- only "20% of the wall can have paper on it,"  so as a solution, and so that we can still have children's art work in the room,  I am hanging some on the ceiling.

*instructions for the art on the front row can be found here, and for the back row here.

What are you doing, Miss Elizabeth?  Hanging some rope.  For what? To hang paintings.  Why? To decorate our room and display your art work.  Can we decorate our room? If you want to.  What do you need? Yarn.

So I gave them some yarn, and they started "decorating" the area where the blocks are kept.  It started out as just strands of yarn here and there, but eventually they decided to make a "spider web."  

As you can see they worked very diligently, both boys and girls together.  

We left it up for the entirety of the day.  They enjoyed adding to it and crawling under and over the strings.  

The spider web did its job and captured a pest!

A little spider even slept in the web during nap time.  (You can see the blue cot in the corner of this photo).  

The spider also got our table.  The kids thought it was interesting that the table was round, but the spider web was square because of the legs.  

All and all it was a good day.  They also played limbo and jump rope with the string.  So I guess the moral of the story not to fear when my plans don't work out, the children will always find something else to learn from.  

An awesome creation

I say this a hundred times, but the thing about teaching is, the kids teach me all the time.  For the last few days we have had water in the sensory bins in my room.  This is nothing unusual.  Water is a pretty common sensory bin filler.  In it I placed many scoops, funnels, sponges, spoons, etc.  I also had a wheel in it (always fun for the first ten minutes), an old fashioned hand mixer,  and two turkey basters.

In this water table there are several things that they explored.  I added soap yesterday so they spent a lot of time creating many bubbles using the mixer and sponges to whisk up and squeeze out bubbles.  I added ice and they scooped and melted ice.  They also put the the funnel wide side up over the turkey baster end so that it extended the length.  

The Discovery

The greatest discovery, however, came a half an hour before lunch.  One little girl, we will call Brenda, was occupied with the idea of getting the turkey baster to squirt straight up in the air.  She couldn't because there was not enough water in the bulb to go up the length of the tube, not even to just pour and dribble over the sides.  Seeing this, a friend, we will call Georgia, attached a right side- up funnel to the upside down turkey baster and began pouring water into the funnel.  It took a while for her to realize that she had to squeeze the bulb of the turkey baster to get the water to run down into the baster and not remain in the funnel, but once she did it was fantastic.  They would shoot water  out the top of the funnel by squeezing the bulb of the turkey baster-  taking turns being the girl to stabilize the device, and the girl to squeeze the bulb.  They would refill and do it over and over, now adding another friend, Tina, to the mix.  It wasn't long before the entire room was watching these three girls.  Sometimes it shot out with a kind of coarse mist and other times just a thin stream.  Sometimes they would add too much water and it would just bubble over in the funnel.  Sometimes the water shot out only a few inches, other times it hit the ceiling (about 9 feet high)  and traveled a few feet across the room!

What they learned

So what was the point of this?  Was this just "another day" at play?  No, no, this was something big.  At lunch most days I go around the table and ask each child what they liked about today.  Every single child said that the thing they liked best today was when Brenda and Georgia were shooting the water out of their creation, even the ones who were just watching.  They learned something that day, they learned about the power of water, the power of suction, and the power of air.  They may not know these words yet, (although I probably mentioned them during the course of this activity) but when they encounter the word "suction" they have a concrete experience to attach it to.  

More than this, they learned about team work.  They could never have done this without an extra set of hands to stabilize the device.  

They also created, on their own, a simple machine; If that does not empower a child, if that does not build self esteem, if that does not inspire them to build and create, if that does not create passion for them, I don't know what does.  

This will be a lasting memory for many of these children, and sometimes positive memories that contain them doing GREAT things, is what it is all about.  

A lesson for you, a lesson for me

Like I said at the beginning, these children teach me all the time, and boy did I learn something today.  Three and a half years ago when I started teaching this discovery NEVER would have happened.  I would have been too wrapped up in getting them to keep the water in the sensory bins on the table.  Yes, I had a lot of cleaning today, and yes, one little girl slipped and fell, but that same girl refused ice because she wanted to get back to the activity as soon as she could.  They had so much fun today, and they worked so hard, and took turns and worked together.  I could never teach that by showing them how to do this, (though truthfully I never would have thought of using those two tools that way- my imagination is limited as an adult, not to mention my inclination to explore or try something that doesn't make "sense"), they taught themselves how to make it.  I also could not teach them something like the necessity of sharing and team work.  I could tell them "if you share, if you take turns, and if you work together, it would be more fun,"  but they never would have believed me, or really even internalized that statement.  Yet, they were sharing, not because they knew that "good" girls share, but because if they didn't share the other friend would stop helping, making it impossible to do, and because it is more fun to experience  something like that with a friend.  Joy shared is joy doubled, (I think that is how the saying goes),  and indeed the sheer delight those girls experienced was contagious.  I know beyond a doubt that this was better than any "teacher project" they could have done.  Preschoolers are not designed to sit at a desk and listen to a teacher teach AT them.  Sitting around and talking about water, about snow, about rain, is not really learning for them.  They have to see it, touch it, play with it, manipulate it, and do what perhaps some overly discerning adult would tell them not to do.  Children can harness potential, passion, and creativity in a way adults only dream they could.   

It is times like this that I wonder how many times I am holding them back from a major discovery by putting unnecessary limits and boundaries in their world.  By telling them not to do something or even by telling the TO DO something- am I hindering their natural instinct to learn and explore their environment?  More and more I realize that, as silly as it sounds, my role should be a "facilitator of learning, "  not a "teacher" in the traditional sense.  It is my job to know what they NEED to learn and to bring them the tools, the space, the time to learn it.  Everyday we as teachers, (or sometimes we as parents), have to create the environment and circumstances for children to learn.  These children teach me how to teach them everyday, and sometimes they teach me how to make a fountain/ shooter/ geyser/ out of a turkey baster and funnel.  

Painting six ways

#1: Drizzle painting: for this I gave them three containers of tempera paint with pipettes.  I used powdered tempera mixed to a consistency thick enough to stick to the paper towels, but thin enough to run down the paper.

This girl was particularly interested in how high up on the paper she could put the paint and get it to still drip on the floor.  (Process!)

The girl who made this painting was persistently trying to make vertical lines; she said to me, in only a slightly exasperated voice, "even when I make lines across, they still drip down." 

#2: Color mixing. This activity is pretty self explanatory, but I cannot say enough about it.  They loved this activity (boys too) and created some fantastic shades.  See at the end of this section for a Bev Bos video that inspired it.  

video:

#3:  Dough Paint:  I found this in the Science Arts book.  The paint is made of equal parts salt, flour, and water, with a little paint added.  The book calls is "Sparkle Dough Paint," but I wouldn't say it actually "sparkles."  None the less it is a fun art activity.  They helped me funnel it into squeeze bottles and off they went.

Most of them chose to do "fold over" paintings, I did not suggest it, but one child did it and it caught on like wildfire.  (The term "Fold Over Painting" is borrowed from Bev Bos.

I love the one above.  It took forever to dry (three days) but I thought it was such a creative use of the materials. 

I love how this one (above) was folded at an angle to make an interesting shape.

#4:  Salad Spinner Art: This is one of everyones' favorite ways to paint at school.  All it takes is some precut paper, some liquid water colors, pipettes, and a salad spinner.  Like most of these painting options- no instructions are needed.

Add as much or as little paint as desired.

Spin for as long and and as fast as desired.

Ta- Da!

#5: Bubble Painting:  Some children a little older than my class did this project and was fascinated by making really cool designs on their paper with the over flowing bubbles but my class wasn't really interested in what was happening to their paper.  They were interested in what was happening in the cup: the bubbles building, the bubbles overflowing, the bubbles popping.  This being said, we switched from paper to paper towels so we could do more bubbles faster and clean up faster.  

#6:  Incline Painting (with cars and marbles!):  This activity was inspired by one of my favorite blogs:  Teacher Tom's Blog.  Now, mine was not as complex as Teacher Tom's, but I am not a builder, or a "tinkerer" or anything of the sort.  

My simple solution was to adjust only one side of our adjustable table.  I put a sensory pan at the bottom to catch the cars and left the roll of paper on the floor by the legs, pulling the paper over the top and cutting it off for the next group.  

This was pretty fun, and kept the boys interest for more than ten minutes!

A big clean mess

My class has been begging to do cabbage juice experiments ever since we did the project a week ago.  However, I can't really take the smell of cabbage anymore.  It literally has always turned my stomach.  I think it is because I grew up in a rural area and so when I smell cabbage I think of the rotting cabbage field smell?  Anyway, on to more important things.  

Since cabbage juice is out for at least 3 months (and hopefully they will stop asking by then), I thought a little free experimenting was in order.  So today I loaded up our table with acids and bases:  Lemons (cut in half), medium grape fruits (cut in quarters), baking soda, alka seltzer tablets, dish soap, and water. With these things, surely any child can create a potion to suit their fancy, and as a matter of fact they made not one, but at least 5 each.  

Lemons are actually the most acidic citrus fruit followed by limes and the grapefruit.  The beautiful thing about the grapefruit is that they are so easy to squeeze and have a ton of juice in them. The reason for giving them the actual fruit is that, to me, it makes it more real when they actually see it coming out of the fruit.  Squeezing also slows them down, so in theory they are able to take in more of what is happening, and also is a great motor exercise; They really have to use those little hand muscles on the lemons!

They went through many grapefruit and lemons in this experiment. 

I had assumed that they would be more likely to use lemons, since they would yield a greater reaction but they seemed to prefer the grapefruit for two reasons. First, the grapefruit (as I said earlier) were easier to squeeze juice from, and second, like most 4 year olds they have small "boo-boos" on their hands and they found that the grapefruit didn't sting their boo-boos like the lemon did.  


In any case, they were able to create a wide variety of reactions (and "potions").  

This was probably one of the best reactions we had: a little baking soda, some soap and a big squeeze of lemon, it eventually overflowed the container.

I think this one had three or four alka seltzer, water, soap, baking soda, and maybe a pinch of grapefruit juice

One little girl was working on a cup that was not really reacting beyond a few bubbles no matter how many alka seltzer tablets she put in.  You can see here that when she dumped it on a top the alka seltzer were still whole, protected in a layer of baking soda and soap.  (In this mixture there was only water, dish soap, baking soda and alka seltzer).

You can see that once she added lemon juice several things began to happen: the baking soda bubbled, the alka seltzer began to dissolve, and swirling patterns emerged in the liquid resulting from the reactions.

One child put an alka seltzer tablet on the grapefruit and on the lemon and then gave them each a little squeeze.  The one on the lemon dissolved first, as you might imagine.  


After they had successfully used all available cups and containers  and neutralized almost everything, they were content to just mix their potions with each other, pouring them back and forth and adding water and baking soda, (the only things left from the 2 dozen lemons and dozen grapefruit), stirring, and pouring some more.  To get water, by the way, they used turkey basters instead of pipettes- allowing them to use more at once.  The basters also became instrumental in transferring liquids between cups for them and doubled as stirring utensils.  I got this idea from somebody's   blog but I cannot remember to whom the blog belonged, so if it belonged to you- let me know and I will link you to this entry.  


They really enjoyed this experiment, (although maybe not quite as much as cabbage juice).  One child did ask me if they could have the vinegar (remembering the power of the vinegar from the last experiment, no doubt).  However, because vinegar is much better suited for outdoors science projects, and because we were out of vinegar thanks to the cabbage project, they made do with the lemon juice.  


**Another really awesome thing about this project is that between the lemon, baking soda and soap, it makes any room smell amazing! It is a welcome change from cabbage juice.  Those three ingredients are also great for cleaning, so the table and floor that the project is on will clean up beautifully- it actually took  a couple of stains off the table that ordinarily I would use Commet for when the kids weren't around.  :-)