Clay
Last week we continued to explore materials for representation, such as clay and tiles. The first few days we explored the clay with our hands: rolling, pinching, flattening.As the children became more familiar with how they could manipulate the clay, we added tools. The children used the tools in a variety of ways. They noticed that they could "make the lines disappear" by smoothing over the lines created by the textured rolling pin. One of their areas of interests seems to be how they can vary the impressions in the clay by pressing hard or more softly.
Some of the children used the same tool and varied the types of marks that they made in the clay. "Look, now you can hardly see it. But when I press hard it is easier to see." The children also discovered that one tool could make many different types of impressions. One child used a mallet in the clay and found that it made small circles by pressing the handle into the clay, triangles by pressing the front shape into the clay and rectangles by pressing the side of the mallet into the clay. The children also began to notice that the thickness of the clay was related to how deep they could make their impression. Grace began pressing the rolling pin into the clay and noticed that when the clay was thick, the tool made a deep impression. "This one is big."
Yesterday, the children used materials from around the classroom to create impressions in the clay. They discovered that many of the items that they chose created patterns or designs in the clay. After pressing a piece of a necklace into the clay, Natalie noticed, "There are circles where the balls are."
Slinkys
Yesterday and today the children have been challenged to discover how to get the slinky to walk down the steps of the stage. As this was a first exploration for many of the children, they were very focused on exploring how the slinkys moved. Malak stretched the slinky into a rainbow shape to imitate how the slinky walks down steps. Izzy stretched the slinky between her hands, held it in the air and dropped one side of it. "It bounces!"
After lots of trial and error, there were some children that were not sure that they slinky would make it down the steps. "If you keep pushing it off the step, it will fall down." Later this week, we will continue our exploration by building a set of stairs for the slinkys. Then we will encourage the children to build their own set of steps for the slinky.
