Monsters in Fashion, Paris

Arrgh!  Monsters in Fashion is an exhibition currently showing in Paris.

"Despite some unevenness in the exhibition, there’s an adventurous spirit, a whiff of the circus, and a celebration of the imagination. Some designers seem like children given too many unrelated art supplies, but some have radical and innovative ideas of beauty. The crux is new representation: of body, of proportion, of aesthetic ideals. It’s fashion as a form of visual metamorphosis, where beauty is reimagined in a more liberal way."

(via The Daily Beast)

the creative (classroom)

I recently checked The Creative Family out of the library.  The author, Amanda Blake Soule, is the writer and photographer behind Soule Mama, a wildly popular blog about life and family in Maine.

I enjoyed reading it, and I think that early childhood educators, especially ones who are interested in taking a more holistic approach to education, can find useful inspiration here. A few ideas that resonated with me:

"The things we have around us and the things we see in our daily lives all greatly affect the way in which we create." (p. 29)

When we look around our centers and classrooms and schools and day cares, what do we see?  What do the children see?  What is valued by adults and children?  Its not just about the commercial items versus the natural items: t goes deeper than that.  What we present and suggest for children to use in their explorations will guide those explorations - we cannot forget that.

Soule also shares ideas on imaginative play, which you know have been at the front of my mind lately. I had a bit of a revelation when reading her suggestions for a wonderful "dress-up trunk".  She lists a few key items: scarves, hats, shoes, accessories, and makeup.  Although we might not have the makeup on a regular basis, I pictured the other items she lists presented carefully in the classroom, and I can see how children can use those.  

The kicker is that when I was growing up, we had a dress up trunk with my mother's old dresses and shoes and bags and other second-hand things.  No fancy costumes, just interesting clothes.  That is how it should be.  I feel as if I'm on a bit of a quest for the perfect prompts for imaginative play, and I'm glad to have a few reminders from this book.  

Making a Decision

I have never really been one for themes in the classroom.  When I started my career as a teacher, I went though a time when dramatic play would be transformed by a teacher into a post office or a doctor's office or a store, with props to match.

I have not shared much about my Action Research project that I am working on this semester.  It is taking a lot of my energy, but it is definitely a positive thing.  I am focusing on Children's imaginative play for my project, so I have been spending a lot of time watching children engaged in imaginative play, and the easiest place to see and capture that is in the dramatic play area.  I gather videos and notes each Tuesday and Thursday as I watch children play, and for the first two weeks of this data collection, dramatic play had costumes; plates, cups, and spoons; fabric, and two giant boxes.  The boxes were open ended, and they were everything from jails to houses and caves and stores.  One thing I noticed was that watching that play was like watching a pinball: themes and ideas and roles changed constantly.  Children often revisited the same ideas and concepts, but each idea would have about 3 minutes before switching.

This is not necessarily negative.  This is how they want to play, in a way: they want to try out different things, places, roles, ideas, and more.  That is why I love imaginative play, and I want to promote it constantly in the classroom.

That said, I have been getting more and more curious as I have been watching more imaginative play than average.  Could I help them stick with an idea and get deeper into it?  So many teachers chose a dramatic play theme, and I was curious to try and create a focus in dramatic play without giving something too definite.  I think that if there seems to be just one thing to pretend in dramatic play, some children are bound to never try it out.

The children often play out home themes, with Mommies and babies and bad guys and eating dinner and changing diapers - a big mish-mash of all the ideas and themes that are salient to them.  So, without making a permanent decision like purchasing something, I made a play kitchen out of one of the many IKEA Expedit Shelving units we have in the classroom.

It was all the rage when on Wednesday, the day it was first in the classroom.  Children immediately started pretending to cook, and after a while they were serving it at the table in the dramatic play area. Halfway though the morning, two boys announced that it was their store, and it was open - and it turned into a restaurant, with orders being taken, prepared, and brought to the table.  One of the boys who opened this restaurant has only engaged in dramatic play pretending to be either a tiger or an elk, so we're starting to expand our horizons.

I have to remember not to be afraid to suggest things to children.  I cannot assume that they will just spend all their time pretending to cook and eat: I have seen them be creative and unexpected, and they will likely surprise me, even with a pretend kitchen.

On another note, I now see the potential of these shelves: I'll let you know what we turn it into next!

Productivity v. Chaos

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this topic before, but it is something I struggle with as a teacher.  Although I feel like I have learned quite a bit about teaching, there are days when I feel that I don't know anything.

The photo above was taken in the middle of choice time on Monday.  I have had some challenges with this particular group of children and engagement - it was a much bigger challenge three months ago.  But between how the classroom environment is set up, what materials and prompts are presented, and how those materials and prompts are presented, I find that children are getting into their work.  And the work that so many of them love is dramatic play.

I have written about dramatic play before, and I hope that we can have a conversation about it here.  I am proponent of open-ended materials for children - I want them to make their own decisions about what they want to work on.  I stopped setting up stores and post offices and doctor's offices in the dramatic play area years ago, and I have tried putting in open-ended materials : scarves, shells, rocks, squares of fabric, chairs and tables - I have made many attempts.  Nothing has been the picture of success that I imagined as I presented the materials.  More often than not, small items are put into bags or wrapped in fabric and carried around the room; unifix cubes become pet food and legos are poured into a construction helmet and become soup.  It is very imaginative, but it ends within 3 minutes for something that draws the children in more.

My desire to support the children in my classroom as they explore the world through dramatic play is a double edged sword.  Do I tell them what to play by providing an exact "play environment"?  I know they are playing and exploring using open-ended materials, but I feel that I can support them better.  My struggle right now is to find the middle ground between teacher-chosen prompts and open-ended materials that children are not drawn to as imaginative props.

Do you set up dramatic play for children?  If you do, is it a topic that the children have seemed interested in?  If not, how do you engage the children in the play?

moving forward, then turning around.

With the interest in construction in the classroom, our inquiry has been focused on pretend: what have the blocks become, and are we pretending to use the blocks for?

Before our November break, a large construction was made, and everyone agreed that it was a hotel.  The children worked together to construct, then add details to, a large construction made out of the hollow blocks.  There was even a preferred way of picking them up and moving them around.

We sat down and talked about hotels and found out what the children know about them: beds, pools, food, and car parks seemed to be the major themes.  The children then sketched some basic ideas about what we might want our hotel to look like.  As teachers, we saw the hotel they had already built as the rough sketch, and we wanted to give them the valuable experience of planning and drafting and collaborating, then building.  They sketched on chalkboards.

 

  

We put the blocks away for the November break in preparation for a carpet cleaning.  But when we returned from the week away, we used photo and video slideshows to reflect on the experience of creating the hotel to bring the children back into the mindset of hotel construction.  But the spark just was not there anymore.

What was still happening, though, was construction with the big blocks.  Structures were created and adjusted without specific ownership - the blocks and the structures becamse flexible constructions that are everyone's property.  Multiple children would be in playing around the blocks, with some imaginging they were in a castle, and others pretending that same structure was a robot.

 

So our reflections on this behavior made us abandon the hotel.  This group might enjoy a day of playing hotel after constructing it, but their fantasy play is so varied that it almost seems unfair to corner their play.  I feel like this shift came from respect for the children's work and ideas.  As teachers, we see our role  as documenters and facilitators, especially during this inquiry.  How can we help them go further?  What else do they need?  Who else can they be?

One way that we will be trying to share this documentation is through a large panel that spans a wall in the room.  It will be a work in progress, documenting the progress and the story of their play and exploration of pretend.  It is right at their level, too, so I hope it is used as a resource.

We're off to a funny start - going in one direction and turning around - but it seems like the best decision for this group.  We're excited to see what they show us.

Thinking about last winter.

Dramatic Play

First, the Turtlewings meeting was wonderful. I met Julianne, who runs the organization, and her husband Peter. I'm looking forward to working with them -- we're talking about doing something with the preschool where I work starting in the spring; and my plan is to keep on attending the monthly Turtlewings meetings.



Now, dramatic play. As a university student, I learned that dramatic play is a center in the early childhood classroom that many people refer to as "dress up". There is also a wide tendency to call it the "kitchen area", I have noticed, most likely because it is typically equipped with child-sized cooking appliances. This, this, and this have all been in past classrooms of mine, and in most preschool classrooms.

I was at a workshop hosted by the University Child Development School in Seattle last spring, and Lella Gandini (from Reggio Emilia) was there, speaking about classroom environments. She said that when she and some other Italian educators first visited the United States, they wondered if everyone got their furniture and supplies from the same place, because all of the classrooms were exactly the same. Everyone in the room chuckled, out of truth and guilt.

What people need to see is that those do not authentically reflect a child's home, life, or interests. They are toys. They are not open-ended. They leave no room for creativity.


And even if you are trying to make your dramatic play area a place where children can go more in depth on a project, and it should be a kitchen, yellow plastic pots and fake stove burners are not going to inspire the children. Dramatic play should allow children to be open-ended and self motivated; and is should reflect their own lives and interests. If it is going to be a kitchen, try to fill it with containers that children would see in their own pantry at home; or with real dishes to prepare a table with.

In my first year of teaching, we would change the dramatic play area according to childrens' interests and the project or topic of study. In my recollection, it was four things over the course of the year: a kitchen, a store, a doctor's office, and a restaurant. The children were engaged in each one, but it was always a magical room transformation for them -- they would arrive on a Monday morning to new props, items, and furniture arrangement. Should children have more of a say in the arrangement of their classroom environment? I think dramatic play may be a good place to try that out.



Our dramatic play area has had one transformation already -- from a tiny area of just a coat rack and a table to a larger place for children to play. On Friday, five "kitties"and one "Mommy cat" were the center of dramatic play action. The area is open-ended, in my opinion -- there are chairs, mirrors, scarves, natural items, our fabulous painted tree stump, animal masks, and small materials like buttons, leaves, straws, paper, and pencils. These things can come and go as well -- nothing has to be permanent. But a child who wants to play as a fox does not have to be discouraged because there is just a toy kitchen -- each child can make it what they want it to be right now.


With "dress up clothes", I again am not one to close off possiblities. And, not to hack on Lakeshore, but these are plastic and polyester play costumes. I would much rather give children the opportunity to use their imaginations -- that is why we use scarves in our classroom. A nice addition, though, would be different kinds of materials, in a variety of sizes, that children can spread and fold and experiment with, or wrap around their heads, waists, feet, or whatever they are inspired to do.


Dramatic play is very popular in our classroom, and I think I will take that opportunity to allow the children to help plan how it should evolve. Our recent conversations about bats, birds, and mud can be our jumping off point.

It is not (and will not be) a carbon copy of someone else's idea for dramatic play. I have gotten many great ideas from other teachers and implemented a version in my classroom, but we're not going to make microphones out of toilet paper tubes unless the children collaborate on/ think of the idea.

So look in the corner of your classroom and ask yourself: is it dramatic play? Or is it dress up?

Early Childhood Research and Practice

I make regular visits to the Early Childhood Research & Practice website, waiting for new volumes. They only publish twice yearly, so it was a big treat to see that the Fall 2008 issue had emerged.

I am not sure why, but I have not mentioned that there was a day in September when eleven out of the twenty children in my classroom were in the dramatic play area. One corner of the room was transformed into a buzz of action that included princesses, babies, daddies, puppies, superheroes, and big sisters. I have never had a class that was so attracted to dramatic play! Even now, each day, the area is being used. It is full of open-ended materials that I am always reconsidering.

The new volume of ECRP has three articles on supporting dramatic play, including one on puppets in a special education classroom, and one about a child-based transformation of a dramatic play area into a zoo. Although the programs mentioned differ quite a bit from my own, I think there are some good points and ideas for pretend play.