A thread begins with teachers noticing. How are the children using the materials? What is the language around their play?
“We’re building a skyscraper…The sky starts in California, I mean France.” MILES
“I’m making a whole city and these are cars. This is a water tower. And these are tunnels they’re going through…That was a skyscraper. It fell down. It was old and they knocked it down.” CASE
“Chicago tower. It’s the tallest tower. I never go’ed, but I really want to. It needs two points at the top.” TRAVERS
As the children played they used materials to make visible their thinking leaving teachers to wonder aloud,
What do we know about Cities?
We begin with a small group…
“I know what they are because I used to live in a city.” -Miles
“I know a lot about cities too because I went to Boston so much times.” -Case
What do you know about cities?
“They have skyscrapers that touch the sky.” -Case
“They used to always have so many street sweepers in front of my house and they would sweep it into a big pile and then they would come and clean it up.” -Miles
“Tall towers. There are cranes. Skyscrapers are a kind of crane that goes up and down.” -Travers
“Oh Travers, that is so not true. The cranes drive on wheels and they put them on top of skyscrapers and they build it higher, higher, higher.” -Case
“There’s a lot of trucks in a city.” -Miles
“Lots and lots of construction trucks. More than Lincoln, more than Maine, more than Vermont…Because they need to do a lot of construction in Boston to make like skyscrapers, tall buildings. ”-Case
With such a universal experience of visiting cities, we decided to introduce this emerging interest in cities to all of the children.
During meeting we asked the class,
What do cities need?
A very animated conversation followed. A list was drawn up of the many things the children felt a city needed.
“They need lights!” -Case
“And they need roads and crosswalks!” -Tait
“Giant buildings!” -Travers
“Cities need parking lots” -Case
“And restaurants!” -Tait
“And humans.” -Charlie N.
“Schools!” -Caroline
Suggesting the children close their eyes and picture what it was like when they went to a city, what did they notice?
“I noticed there were beds and air mattresses in the cities I’ve been.” -Charlie N.
“House and buildings.” -Case
“Suitcases!” -Tait
“Garages.” -Wes
While it was clearly hard to contain the children’s enthusiasm to voice what they know about cities, we wonder what more discoveries they will find about cities as we use new materials such as Legos, reference books, photographs, and more to explore their ideas about cities.
