The past few weeks have been very interesting since
curriculum night. Ms. Gillespie
collected drawn plans of the children’s tools from everyone and wrote down
their “grocery list” of materials they needed to make them. From there they moved on to making their
tools. Ms. Gillespie visited a store
called the scrap box in Ann Arbor and purchased a variety and abundance of open
ended materials the children could use to make their tools.
The children were very excited about the different materials
that were going to be available to them.
Even some of the parents commented on not being able to wait to make a
tool. When it came time to make the
tools, Ms. Gillespie reminded them of their plans and they set about creating
the tools. Several questions circulated
to help the children make their tools.
“What do you want your tool to do?
How are you going to attach those things together? What should you attach to this? Where is the sand going to go in? Will the sand be able to come out? Is this what you want it to do?” Several children worked for a long period of
time to make their tools.
The children were invited back out to tell Ms. Gillespie and
Ms. Victoria how the tool worked. They
also decided whether the tool worked the way they wanted it to or not. At that point the children had the choice to
decide if they wanted to fix their tool, make a new one or be done. Most decided to make additional tools.
Ms. Gillespie will be finishing up with the children and
their tools by the end of this week, but the fun does not end here. We would like to invite parents of Monday and
Wednesday morning children to join us the morning of Monday, December 10th. At arrival time all of the supplies will be
out for children to make a tool for themselves with their children to take
home. In addition, at 9:15 we will be
doing group time in the seminar room and watching a video. This video will contain all of the children
who made a tool. We will be watching
them all as they demonstrate how to use their tool and describe how it works as
well as if it works the way they wanted it too.
Parents are welcome to stay and view their children’s success in this
inquiry investigation.
