Storytelling and Other Magical Moments

Imagining Dialogue: Inspired by a walk in the snow. Light Table Stories: Creating beautiful moments with language and play Design Thinking: Creating possibilities to design, test, change and play  

Beautiful things quietly support specific learning, socialising, self-management, focus and creativity.  How do you use loose parts for conversations? Provocations? Connecting with unit thinking? Provocations on a wet and rainy day. Bringing it inside for those wanting to continue and explore and choose new materials.

A materials exploration that leads to  student inquiries, evolving experts, magical moments and beautiful art.

We filled our Outdoor Learning time with snow's natural provocations - sledding, digging, sculpting, rolling and just playing. I added a bit of color to see how the discussion would change. While many students stuck to soccer in the snow and other gross motor activities, we also had snow filled paintings and designs.  Some painted small snowmen and today The Snow Bakery opened up, with beautifully decorated snow cakes and one rainbow ice soufflé! Happy Artists. Almost the end of thirty minutes of collaborative painting! "Can I use a pro scope to take a closer look?" The bakery in full working order. A fresh strawberry cake is on the right. 'I call this the rainbow soufflé!"  Beautiful colors.

After Christmas is an amazing (and cheap) time to find loose parts on sale at Hobby Lobby, Michael's, various Dollar Stores, Jo-Ann Fabric and even Target. Here are a few of my last minute purchases on my visit to the US. Even decorative pieces from gifts were valuable for my back to school stories and play. Different balls, ornaments and marbles to add to construction, stories, designs and light table creations.  Ornament hooks that fit nicely into old wooden pegboards. I will add this to my screws, nails, small straws and golf tees. Pegboards are great provocations for math, but also fantastic for small (contained) storytelling spaces. Cannot wait to put these by the light table and construction area. These will be added to two story boxes. They were less than a dollar with the sales at Hobby Lobby. Perfect inviting story box provocations. Although not on sale, I always love some rainbow ribbon, for those spontaneous magical moments.

I wanted to use some of the new tools that we purchased for an open ended provocation at Outdoor Learning.  All I needed was broken electronics, some screw drivers and a place to organize all the cool pieces or loose parts. The focus, attention to detail and negotiations made with all the pieces that offered a fantastic opportunity to observe language, confidence and also fine motor skills. The group at the table are intently working and  sharing the materials. The foreground shows some of their thinking with the bigger parts. Gray. Silver. Black White. Clear. They chose to sort by color, material, size and texture. Asserting themselves at times in order to be heard and understood.                                   What do we do next with all these amazing Loose parts?

The light table has become the newest venue for storytelling. Asking children to explain their "light table stories" provides and opportunity for them to tell about their creation from a different lens. Not only do they use descriptive words, but words from story telling engagments move in and out of their descriptions. "One day there was a crab princess castle. It was beautiful. There was a beautiful sun inside and many happy crab princesses." "This is a story about a car with lots of wheels.  It is shooting blue fire and fireballs. There is a purple minecraft piece floating in the top and the villages are there with it. They are safe because they are not getting shot." "This is a shark, a beautiful shark. There are so may many bubbles around the shark. This shark is swimming inthe beaufitul beautiful ocean. Let's add shells. Because oceans have shells and blue waves at the top."

Just a touch of color in the sandbox made cooking just a bit more fun!   Loose parts creations are my favorite thing to observe process and product.  

Thoughout the school year I always hope to provide provocations for storytelling in many ways.  For me, watching students take loose parts, found objects and at times random pieces of "stuff" to create stories is an amazing and intricate process. They must choose. Think. Choose. Think. Then tell. While hoping to create something fun, cool, unique and interesting, with unusual choices of materials.  Infusing materials of all textures, quality, size and shape have also allowed for integrating discussion about our Unit of Inquiry, How the World Works .  Below are images of story scenes. Each scene had characters, beginning, middle and an ending. The Penguin and the Pool The Princess Fights the Baddies The Alien Builds a Home (and Eats a Butterfly) Butterfly Hotels

Princesses and Castles. This is how it all started. A simple backdrop that gave one student with very limited English a "private" quiet space to practice language.  The language and the world she loved. It was a world full of, "Wa-su-ponee-tie (Once upon a time)" and "Dey-lii-happy-ezer-afer (They lived happily ever after)" two of the few sentences she spoke. So I went with it. She would sing and try new words, ask and point to things around the class. Princesess, Frozen, Elsa, Anna, Cinderella, witches, unicorns, jewels, love, kisses, marriage, death and horses. She would sing her stories loudly and other students would watch. They were not as interested in princesses, but in telling their own stories around the castles was definitely cool. Storytelling with a simple castle scene. She was able to focus on the language she wanted and needed to be successful, intrinsically motivated and have fun. Others didn't want to tell stories with a ...