All hands on deck! The children were presented with a task of building a group paper mache sailboat using all hands! The challenge in any group project is to decide on the roles, to include everyone, to take someone else’s feelings into consideration. "George the Giant" gave Fox his shirt to replace the torn sail on his sailboat. The sail / shirt became the object of desire for two of the children, and it was difficult for them to decide who could "take charge of it." Now, the children have an entire boat to create together, each child taking turns to "take charge."
On the first day of this project, the children decided the boat needed to be taped together. There was much excitement in the air. Orin, Lysander and Tai, were in charge of assembling the 3D sailboat model. Pippa volunteered to be in charge of masking tape distribution.
Tai held the bow of the boat, Lysander and Orin the stern The children practiced asking politely for the tape, requesting specific sizes, and saying thank-you. Pippa replies “You’re welcome.”
As the boys tape the boat together, they negotiate and pass the boat down their assembly line, each child taping as Pippa looked on. When Orin tried to expedite the process and take the tape away from Pippa, Tai quietly said, “No, it’s her job.”
Each child has their own colour, and their challenge is to equally distribute the colours. . At one point Orin said “Hey we need more orange.” Acknowledging that Pippa needed to contribute more to their creation, the boys passed the boat to her so that she could decorate.
The children continued to take turn adding paper mache strips to the boat. Each child was given their own strips of newspaper but the bowls of coloured mache and the boat was common had to be shared. They were constantly negotiating where the strips were needed, and how "flat" they should be. I noticed that there was more a a desire to have "mache balls" inside the boat and flat strips on the outside of the boat. They also decided to use different colours for the outside of the boat. The children chose new colours, pink and blue prevailed.
This project gave the children a chance to practice their communication skills and exercise their right to be listened to:
"no don't put it there!"
"hey now I can't see my strip"
"aren't you going to hold it for me?"
"it's my turn"
When a request was not met with action, the children were challenged to appreciate and consider the feelings and point of view of their peers. Upon request, the child that dropped the boat, reciprocating in kind. After much debate, some strips were rearranged.
I was quite surprised to learn that the children would have preferred to make their own individual boats. Inspite of the beautiful boat they were making together, individual preferences prevailed. I had a sense that, unlike their other projects, this is one boat, that no one child can take home, and I had a sense that the children had an awareness of this as they were creating. They always referred to the boat at "the boat" as opposed to "our boat" or "Earth Group's boat."
The only thing missing from the boat was the mast and the sail. All of the children decided that we needed a stick for the mast and paper for the sail. However, 3 children wanted to draw the sail and 3 children wanted to paint the sail. So, they split into two groups and did both.
The children collected sticks from the forrest and are determining which stick is the right size. Tai and Orin are using a ruler. They think if the stick that is the same length as the ruler is the perfect mast for the boat.
Pippa is using her arm as her measuring stick.
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