It rained yesterday so I had indoor recess duty with the kindergarten students.\u00a0 The current K class will be my case study class.\u00a0 I have 2 students, who are twins, as case study kids and will be looking for some others.\u00a0 One thing I am noticing right away is the the K classes are full of engineering opportunities for kids. See the gallery below for some of the examples I saw at yesterday’s recess.<\/p>\n
Why do we stop in K?\u00a0 We must think that this is only play and that it is only for little kids at school.\u00a0 I was thinking of doing\u00a0 a survey of elementary classroom teachers in our district to see what engineering materials they have available.\u00a0 I know when I taught third grade, I usually had a take apart center with old typewriters and electronic devices for the students to take apart.\u00a0 My theory is that we need to support and continue children’s natural interest in engineering and building throughout school.<\/p>\n
I noticed right away that Reid, one of the twins, was making some sophisticated Lego creations, in this case a vehicle.\u00a0 When I asked him about the vehicle, he clearly had a story narrative to go along with the truck.\u00a0 See the video below.\u00a0 This supports the idea that kid’s engineering is frequently closed tried to creative or fantasy play.\u00a0 An interesting question is what comes first:\u00a0 do they build to support the fantasy they have in mind, or do they build first and create a narrative around that, or is it simultaneous and co-evolving?<\/p>\n