Jordan and Katie Week 2 (Clay Play)

What We Saw

This weeks main focus was experimentation of different clay like materials. The 3-5 year olds were introduced to the idea of studio centers in the classroom. They were given the freedom to roam about each center to explore play dough, modeling clay and goo. It was interesting to see how students responded to each material.

With Play Dough students seemed to utilize the large space the table provided by working flatter and larger. Many students flattened and pounded their Play Dough. Objects were also created, these included large balls, flowers, people, snowmen and food.

When creating with the modeling clay, students seemed to work on a smaller scale while making more three-dimensional objects. Most students squished the clay together to make balls, trees, abstract 3-d pieces and shapes. 

In contrast to the objects built from the Play Dough and modeling clay, as students explored the slimy, slippery goo, they seemed to be focused more on playing, touching and moving the goo rather than building a specific object from it.

When comparing the way the students explored the three clay like materials, we noticed that each student had an interest in mixing the colors together to see what colors they could make. A lot of the mixing resulted in a brown except at the goo table where Jack and Max discovered that they could mix the yellow and blue goo together to make a green.

Students were also introduced to Claymation. We showed them a variety of Claymation videos on YouTube and also showed them a video that we made. After showing the videos we posed the option of giving students the opportunity to collaboratively create a Claymation. Some students took this opportunity upon themselves to bring over objects, they had made earlier in the day, for the class Claymation. One by one some students began to appear at the Claymation center excited to explore the Claymation process while others stuck to experimenting at the studio centers. Instead of a storyline, the students transformed their Claymation into a movie about play and movement. They combined all three materials (Play Dough, Modeling Clay and Goo) into their Claymation experiment.

 

One of the students, Emily, stayed at the Play Dough studio center for a while making a detailed person that she seemed to be very proud of.  While the Claymation was being made Katie noticed Emily struggling to get her person off of the table.  Unknowingly she actually wanted to bring over her person to the Claymation center.  She asked Katie to help her bring it over while the students at the Claymation center began to make a space for the person to go. In the video, you can see the walls being made by other classmates as the person is being placed in the center of that space. 

What We Learned

1.     Budget Time Wiser (We ran out of time at the end to gather the class together for a group discussion. We wanted to have them compare the various materials and tell us what they learned from working and experimenting with each one. Without this discussion we really are unsure what our students took away from this lesson.)

2.     Put Plastic Down! (The materials, especially the Play Dough and Goo, stuck to the paper covered tables and the soggy, ripped paper contaminated a lot of our materials. Next time we would like to put down a plastic table cloth for the students to work on.)

3.     Work With Students (A lot of the time we felt that we were walking around thinking someone would need our help or something would go wrong but majority of the students were perfectly fine working and exploring. We wish we had sat down to talk to each student and really listen to what they had to say about their exploration process and their artwork.)