Saturday 28 January 2012

Creating a rock wall

Building a rock wall takes a great deal of patience, concentration, spacial awareness, mathematics and trial & error.


Child R (4yrs) was overheard expressing a concern to his peers about the amount of sand that was running into the pond through a gap in the rocks that surround the sandpit.

The educator was called away to support another area of play and when she returned roughly 10minutes later child R was observed in the dry creek bed collecting rocks and carrying them back to the gap.  Child R then began sorting        and classifying the rocks into size and shape before laying a row down.

When the first row had been laid, child R collected more rocks and returned to lay another row on top.  Again he sorted the rocks, however this row was proving a little more difficult as rocks needed to balance on top of each other.  The wall fell several times, but child R persevered, calling out for peers to get smaller rocks or bigger rocks from the dry creek bed.



 Once completed, child R showed an enormous amount of pride in his work, explaining to the educator how some of the rocks kept falling "but I just kept trying like a jigsaw".  He then asked if the wall could stay up so he could show his mum when she collected him.


This was one of my favourite experiences to observe last year.  Completely child initiated and carried out.  Child R demonstrated many skills through this project including an appreciation and respect for his environment, classification skills, mathematical concepts and wonderful
                                                                                    communication skills.



7 comments:

  1. Fabulous anecdote. Sounds like he exhibited some excellent leadership and organizational skills as well!

    Lynne

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  2. Wonderful to see kids constructing outdoors. I enjoyed this post and shared it. I and thought you might like to join our Facebook Group BLOCKS ROCK
    http://www.facebook.com/groups/215969138479577/
    where educators share ideas and inspiration on block play and construction.

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  3. Thank you for the feedback Karen, It is always appreciated. I'll head on over and check out your page.

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  4. I have ran across you blog many times and love your posts. I hope you don't mind me saying, but I am commenting on this post especially because I am happy to see the great photos. I am not so found of the dot or blur that covers the child's face. In these you took close ups of their hands working or from the back, which is brilliant. Very good shots here! If you have the full child in, you can always crop the photo down to show only his or her hands working! Keep up the fabulous posts!

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  5. of course like your web site but you have to take a look at the spelling on several of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling problems and I find it very troublesome to inform the reality then again I'll definitely come back again.
    Hogri Toothbrush Holder and Timer

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks so much for the constructive feedback. The photos I use in the blog posts I also use in the children's portfolios and the parents do like to see their children's smiling faces. I will however experiment with cropping tools to see how I can make the posts more user friendly.

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  7. Thanks you Robert for your honest feedback. I have looked back through and am horrified at my spelling. It shows that I need to slow down, perhaps save the preview and return the next day, looking over the post with fresh eyes before putting it out into the big wide world.

    Thanks for sticking with me.

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