In the Classroom: February 2014

In creative play ,we have had a busy January and February. We have been playing out nighttime stories. It usually takes two days to get through all the groups. I, Pickett Craddock, am playing with the kids Tuesday and Wednesday and Oran Sandel alternates between Tuesday and Wednesday. The stories we have played this month are Grandfather Twilight, In the Night Kitchen, Stellaluna, Blackout, and Last Night at the Zoo. Our structured play process is to read or tell the story in a seated circle and then everyone picks who they want to be in the story.

For example in Blackout, there is a family using electricity after dark while watching TV, talking on the phone, cooking, and working on the computer. The little sister turns off the TV and wants to play a game with her big sister, her Mom, or her dad. They are all too busy to play with her. Then the lights go out all over the city. Mom finds flashlights for all. They make shadow puppets on the wall, they go to the party on the roof and have hot dogs, they go down to the street and get free ice cream and play in the hydrant the fireman opens. Then the lights come on and everyone goes back to the solitary activities they were doing before. The little sister decides it is more fun with the lights off and the family turns off the lights and plays the game together.

And what are some of the skills and strengths the children gain from all this rich pretend play? In dramatic play children's language flourishes. They speak in advanced "story book" talk using language that is way outside of their daily stock of words and phrases. When children pretend, they have to remember the story and their previous experiences and recreate them in a dynamic way. "For example, to play the role of a doctor, children have to remember what tools a doctor uses, how a doctor examines a patient, and what a doctor says," (Creative Curriculum) In dramatic play children learn cooperation and problem solving. They must share ideas and negotiate with the ideas of others. As they negotiate with others and with the constraints of the story itself, children are also learning to delay gratification, work towards a larger goal and control their impulses. Now doesn't that make your child crawling around with a head lamp, yelling, "Get back here you rascal lions!" look totally different to you?

In Last Night at the Zoo, we were all animals who snuck out of the zoo at night, took the bus to a restaurant, then went to a dance club, out for ice cream and back to the zoo before dawn.

We closed out the month playing night workers. Today we played I Stink, the autobiography of a garbage truck. Some of us worked on the garbage truck and some of us lived in a house that made trash. Then we switched when the first shift of garbage workers left the job and the second shift came on.