How to get an idea

What you do is to take the different bits of material which you have gathered and feel them all over, as it were, with the tentacles of the mind. You take one fact, turn it this way and that, look at it in different lights, and feel for the meaning of it. You bring two facts together and see how they fit. What you are seeking now is the relationship, a synthesis where everything will come together in a neat combination, like a jig-saw puzzle.

A Technique for Producing Ideas, via brainpickings 

It's a bit silly to post to apologize for not posting, but I imagine there is still a group of people out there who are interested in Bakers and Astronauts, and it is important for me to share my thoughts about this blog with you.

I have not posted here in a month, and a lot of that has had to do with living and work transitions.  Although I am not a classroom teacher for the next year at least, I still have interest in early childhood education.  I see myself sharing here, though not in the same capacity that I was before.  I won't have daily tales, but I will have tales.  I still love to look around for ideas and share things that I find, and I hope that has been something readers of this blog have enjoyed.

I've had a whirlwind forst week at my new job, and much of my work will be focused on gardening and various aspects of non-profit administration.  I'm excited for the challenge and the possibilities that are included in that.  I do get to work with children every week, which is important to me.  As summer comes around, I may have more to share because of all the summer programming!

I suppose the point of this post is...don't delete this from your Google Reader just yet.  There is still potential for sharing here.  Bakers and Astronauts just might be turning into Carrots and Volunteer Management!

extending illustrations

I just discovered the book talk blog from the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst - and I love their recurring "picture book puzzlers" feature.

(all images from The Carle)

I have spent a decent amount of money on picture books in my day, and I love reading aloud to children.  There are few things as engaging as a fantastic story told well.  And I think we can agree that it is important to foster a love of books.

The picture book puzzlers offer a pile of ideas for the classroom: using pictures as a prompt to talk about similarities between stories; having children "hunt" for pictures in a classroom, school, or public library; or using snippets of an illustration (a la Tana Hoban) to spark conversation and debate.

It is important to read books to children, but there are so many ways that we can use books to explore, expanding their possibilities.

Tinkering!

wire

Beads and Buttons on Wire (inspired by this)

Exploring Physics (a.k.a. knocking stuff over)

When I was making some general plans for my last month at my current job, I was thinking about fun.  I was thinking about doing stuff that I hadn't done with kids before; I was thinking about really taking the opportunity do things that are truly engaging, and encourage experimentation and exploration.

I'm not sure where the idea came from (but I've seen it since over at Teacher Tom); but when the thought of having a pendulum available popped into my head, I couldn't ignore it.  We spend so much time reminding children not to knock over other people's buildings that a few days of knocking things down on purpose seemed right up our alley.

There was a bit of a learning curve for me: I set the pendulum up, wrapping the string around a light fixture.  I had to rethink it a bit as we went along, eventually providing a table for the stacking of the recyclables.  The building process takes so long, and the knocking down is so quick, that it seems a bit unbalanced.

There was an initial fascination with the recycling ("Ooooh, I love these!  Yum!" and, "Wow!  Who ate this?  Is this for snack?!?!?!").  There was careless stacking and less than ideal choices for positioning, and I found myself scaffolding here a lot.  But it added another layer to the work:  Which box seems strongest?  Will this bottle ba able to hold this larger box, or will it fall?  I modeled using the "stronger" pieces on the bottom of the stack and putting the more delicate things on top.  Sometimes the stack wouldn't totally tumble, and we talked a lot about making stacks that the pendulum could not beat.

The ball was pinned up during the stacking process, and it did necessitate having a teacher there to unpin it.  I thought that was helpful on the first day - it also prevented throwing the ball and children being in the way of the extra eager physicists.  Being with them allowed me to scaffold in the building process.  I have mentioned before that we don't have unit blocks (only cardboard blocks), so this is not a common experience for this group.

There was so much delight on the children's faces then that stack would fall, and they wanted to do it over and over and over again.  They let others in and took turns releasing the pendulum.  They talked about their favorite foods.  They spotted each other when one child would be standing on a chair to put a paper tube all the way on the top.  It was so much more than physics!

Weekend Links

This Friday, I'm sharing some things I've seen that I would love to do in the classroom.  These are some of those little things that really make you stop and think about how to facilitate children's learning about visual expression.

I love love love this idea, which I saw here and was inspired by this original post.

(The Artful Parent)

(Picklebums)

I'm thinking of it as another medium: children can choose what goes on to a scanner surface and use those images to create.  I love how it can make natural items last.  The possibilities seem endless!

I have not used wire in the classroom: I have been an awe-struck observer as other people have introduced wire in the classroom, but I have never taken the leap.  I love the images from Crayons, Wands, and Building Blocks showing children engaged in sketching wire creations:

(crayons, wands, and building blocks)

Happy Weekend!

The perfect illustration

My brain was flying in all directions when I watched this video, via npr.



Educationally, this video makes a clear case for:

• Project-based education
• Early Childhood Education
• Inquiry-based education
• tinkering
• exploration
• open-ended materials
• spending less of an educational budget on kits and worksheets
• upcycling
• the valuable role of adult facilitation
• why adults should support children instead of doing things for them
• why its never too early to try some science experiments

...

Go ahead, add to the list!

Art Dice, Drawing Practice

The children loved playing with art dice last week.  Pretty self-explanatory!  The idea originally came from Tinkerlab.

There are so many possibilities for these little wooden cubes: I'm imagining a game where the dice have different facial features drawn on and they make a monster face, and a second die has numbers to prompt how many of the facial feature to draw.  While we were working I thought about using these dice to make  maps, with lines to represent roads, for example.  

So simple, and so fun!

Weekend Links

There is a new issue of the American Journal of Play out; I'm especially looking forward to reading Lynn E. Cohen's piece making connections between pretend play and the concept of carnival.  I'm always looking for ways to make dramatic play more child centered.



We've been grooving to Radio Hour no. 24 from Snore and Guzzle lately in the classroom.  The naptime trilogy is still my favorite, but every mix is fantastic.



I know that I still need to met go of some of my hangups and foster even more exploration with the children after seeing Tom's photos of a whole body sensory table experience.

Happy Weekend!