4th April 2011
A castle and princess
With lots of questions and discussions the group of children that were at the carpentry table decided to go inside and draw what they wanted to make to give them more of a visual understanding and something to refer to when constructing their own masterpieces. Te Whariki also goes on to highlight that children develop a perc
eption of themselves as “explorers” – competent, confident learners who ask questions and make discoveries (MOE, 1991)
A few girls drew princesses and took their drawings out to the carpentry table, where they used different types of technology such as bottle tops, wood, string, hammer and nails and the hot glue gun. These ‘princesses’ are now something that the girls love to play with outside, especially in the sandpit.
In this photo you can see a child using a hammer, nails, and a piece of wood to start his castle; over the few days of this process he then went inside and painted his castle.
I believe that from children being imaginative children can express their ideas in a way they would like to communicate or see in a result of something they can put together in a constructive form; from the work of Piaget it is known that perceptions depend on the world view of a person. The world view is the result of arranging perceptions into existing imagery by imagination. Imagination is needed to make sense of perceptions for example children creating different forms of construction like castles with ‘characters’, towers and other buildings…
I believe from this learning expereince children have created something that they were interested in and i was able to extend on this by providing the different technology children could help themselves to such as all the different resources available including the hot glu gun, paint, hammer and nails; as I believe that technology is anything that makes our lives eaiser - all these resources helped with fostering children's learning through technology.
What would be some other ways in which I can use technology to help foster children's interest in castles and princess?
References
Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whariki: He wariki matauranga mo nga mokopuna o Aotearoa/ Early childhood curriculum. Wellington , New Zealand
What a great learning experience you provided for the children Lisa. Just through bringing in new resources such as the wood and nails you opened their play to a new level of technology. Through giving them the opportunities to explore the resources you provided them, they were able to have in-depth discussions where they were using language to express their ideas and visions. Which lead to thinking and problem solving and coming up with the idea of going to draw what they wanted to construct first, A teacher in my centre has done this with the children and they were so proud of their work as they were amazed by how their plans came to life. To incorporate more technology in here the children could take photos of their castles and print them out to add to their original plans and make a display of their work on castles.
ReplyDeleteI like how you didn’t limit the children to just designing and building houses, as the girls had draw and made princesses and now use them as toys in other areas of play. I liked the range of resources that the children had access to, this would have helped with their problem solving skills as they could try things out and if it didn’t work try something different. What a great learning experience.