PROJECT ON TOYS

by KRISTA SCOTT,  March 1999 

The Setting

I was beginning a new teaching position, taking over for a teacher midway through the year when I started studying the Project Approach. As I was just getting to know my new kindergarten students I was a bit uneasy about the idea of embracing a new teaching style so soon, but I decided to give it a try.

The Topic

The initial concern for me was what topic to choose. I did not know the children very well and so I did not know their personal interests. I was also fairly new to the Edmonton area and was not familiar with different field work opportunities. I needed something that all the children were familiar with and interested in as well as something that I could easily find resources for and coordinate field experiences with. Then the possibility of a toy project presented itself. I embraced the suggestion discussed in the Project Approach class I was taking and began drawing up a web for that topic. I was discovering that the topic of toys was very broad and encompassed so many sub categories. The more I thought, the greater my web grew.

Toy Stories

As a starting point with the students, I began by telling a short perrsonal story. I spoke about a few of my favorite toys I had as a child and how I still remember having so much fun with them. By the end of the story several children had raised their hands and they were fidgeting with the anticipation that they too may have a chance to share their own toy stories. A few children told stories and then I brought it to a close by asking for suggestions of alternate ways to share that information. The children showed great enthusiasm as they offered ideas such as drawing and writing a story. We moved into our designated play time where the children had the opportunity to explore their own suggestions. For the rest of the week I ensured that I had new and different materials as mediums for them to share, draw and represent their own experiences with toys.

Memory drawing

The first and most popular form of sharing stories came in the form of memory drawings. I did not assign these, rather I set out a bin of paper and a variety of drawing tools and the children took the initiative. The wide range of toys represented reflected the breadth of the topic. From stuffed animals to a foosball table to a dinosaur and a yo-yo ball. The children drew the important characteristics they had remembered about their toys. The memory drawing continued and slowly but surely other forms of expression took hold. Without instruction the children began to paint, mold, construct and create representations of their toys.

Representational activity

I was conscientious about the way that I would evoke explanation of the representations from the children. I did not want to insist that they account for all of their drawing, building, etc. Rather I wanted them to be able to experiment with the medium, think through what it was they wanted to represent and get involved. I wanted to create a situation where the children recognized the worth of verbally sharing a plan for action or describing a finished product. Well, I should have known that when a child is motivated about something that he/she is doing, the class will know about it! (I suppose that is one of the wonders of working with five year olds.) Not long after that I introduced blocks as a medium for expression, Jacob, the child who had drawn the foosball table, decided to build one. He was so proud of the outcome that he ran to get me and exclaimed, "Come see my foosball table!". Up until this point I was pretending not to know what a foosball table was. In my ignorance I was encouraging Jacob to expand his explanation and to add more detail to his earlier drawing. Of course, Jacob felt the need to show me the representation and to explain its parts and purpose. Standing above it he said, "It's a foosball game and it's not electronic and it has a ball and if the ball rolls down and hits the post and goes in [the goal] you're doomed!". Jacob had just communicated to me how much thought and planning had gone into his block structure. He showed me that he was not only an expert on his own toy but that his knowledge of it was meaningful in the explanation. He felt that he had taught me something by telling me about his representation. I replied, "I wonder if your classmates know what a foosball table is. Why don't you share it with the class?". And he did. Our sharing had begun.

Sharing

Jacob's experience was the first step of our classroom sharing. Sometimes it took place in small groups when children were asked by another child, "You want to see my…?". Sometimes it took place, as children became interested in recently displayed work. Sometimes it was a special time where we would sit down as a whole class and update one another on our toy work. It was from a whole group time that a spontaneous activity in sorting and categorizing work began. As we were sharing our most recent project work one day, Sara presented us with a memory drawing of her dog beanie baby. After telling us where she got her dog and that it was actually darker brown, her friend Kourtney chimed in, "I have a dog stuffy too. Just a minute I drew It.". Kourtney went off to get her dog drawing and the conversation began. Trevor said, "Arleen drew a sparkle ball and I drew a ball too.". Trevor had drawn the yo-yo ball that first day. I could see where this was going and thought "what a great opportunity to introduce them to the concept of a web.". So I went and took down the work I had displayed and gathered up all of the drawings and movable representations I could and we sorted them as a class into groups. Up until this point I think the children were so engrossed in doing their own activities or activities with a certain group of friends that they never gave a thought to the fact that other children may have had similar toy experiences or even similar toys. They appeared surprised and pleased to make connections between their own work and the work of their classmates. The next day I sat down with a small group of students at playtime and we labeled the groups/categories that the class had come up with. I posted those headings as the beginnings of our class web and opened up the writing center as an opportunity for the children to write their own toy words to add to the web. Some used invented spelling, some copied off toys or toy containers, lots chose to dictate and have me print. They were involved in web development and I was so pleased!

Questions (Ahhhhhhhhh!)

Concern arose when I was confronted with the realization that the children were not taking a factual/realistic approach to questioning. Rather, when a question arose, the children delighted in the fantastical. They were offering responses that were in no way grounded in experience or logical thought. For example, one child asked, "What makes toy dogs bark?" the response given by another child was that "they are shined on by magic light!". I did not wish to squelch all creativity and imagination, I only wanted for the children to recognize the value of a substantiated response and was anticipating that the factual information drawn from such a response might peak the interest of classmates and lead to some productive discussion. I found that there was nowhere to extend the discussion to in the case of the fantastical and I had difficulty identifying ways in which it would lead to research and data collection. After much contemplation I took the issue to the Project Approach evening class where we had a helpful discussion on the purpose of or idea surrounding the questioning. I thought a great deal about it afterward and decided that I would no longer force the issue of questioning and begin some data collection thinking that that may prompt more concrete questions. I also decided that if the issue of fantastical thinking arose again we would discuss as a class the value of real information and how it's hard to research pretend information. To my surprise the fantastical responses faded out and the children began to recognize more of the concrete attributes and characteristics of the toys around them. Their thinking became more logical, too, as was reflected in our preparation for one of our visiting experts.

Field work

As we became more involved in the field work, the children's questioning improved. I think it was the children realizing that though they had a lot of experience with toys, they did not fully understand how they were constructed or operated, etc. Once the children began to meet the people behind the toys they realized that the average toy was not manufactured in Santa's Workshop or Willy Wonka's Factory but made by an actual person like their moms or dads or grandpas or grandmas. Our first real project related field experience (by real I mean it was planned for a purpose within the project) was to Daisy Dollhouse Village located in Capilano Mall. This field trip was extra special because it was the first time the children had ventured out with their clipboards. We had discussed the clipboards prior to that day along with the purpose of sketching and how sketching is different from drawing. I had emphasized that the purpose of a sketch was to record something that was particularly interesting and label it so that it could be shared with others after we left the site. Once given the clipboards the children worked diligently on sketching and labeling, one child even recorded the prices of the different objects. I was pleased to see the children doing individual work and paying close attention to the detail of the objects. I saw such a difference in the children that day compared to an earlier trip to the museum, they were investing themselves in the experience and I was certain that it held far more value for them.

Experts

The area where I noticed the most development was in the children's ability to formulate questions for the purpose of seeking information. This became so apparent as we prepared for our visiting expert, a toymaker. Prior to Mr. Abbot's visit we sat down as a group and discussed what types of things Mr. Abbot might make. I offered the information that he mainly made things from wood and that he worked out of his home. The children then qualified their questions. Instead of asking, "How does he make remote control cars?" a child asked, "Did he ever make a remote control car?". We developed a list of questions that we had prior to the visit with the understanding that Mr. Abbot might answer them in his presentation. If they remained unanswered, we would ask them at the end. When our expert arrived, the children took out their clipboards and began to sketch. He shared with us many things including the plans that he has before he starts to make the toys. During the presentation the questions changed dramatically from the hypothetical to the practical. The children were very interested in the sequence of building the toys. "Did you paint it first or hammer the pieces first?" asked Alex. "Did you put the little man in before you put on the steering wheel?" asked Adam. I was surprised at how well their questioning had developed and how they were able to identify more contextual questions as the presentation unfolded. The earlier questions were not a waste, nor were they inappropriate. They were speculative questions and they had a purpose in focusing the children's thought on the expert. The later questions were also valuable. They engaged the children in the development of the toy and helped them to understand the purpose in each step from the first to the final product.

Research and data collection

As the children began to share more of their work and as their ability to formulate questions improved, it was natural to turn their own curiosity back to them. For example when a child asked me how many kids had 'beanie babies' I replied, "How might we find out?". The child suggested that we ask them and I used that opportunity to introduce surveying. Other children noticed the survey being taken and soon we had groups coming and going with different items of interest. We were in and out of everywhere for the next little while. A group of children wanted to see if the other rooms had the same kinds of toys as us so they went from room to room recording the different kinds of toys that they found there by drawing them on little sticky notes. That information was later organized into a Venn diagram by another group who had been categorizing our own classroom toys that way. We formulated a bar graph by asking children to write their name on a sticky and post it in one column if they liked stuffies and another if they liked electronic toys. The electronic toys bar was longer so we deduced that more children like electronic toys and fewer children liked stuffies. A different group of children wanted to count how many toys were in the resource room but thought that that was too high to count so I decided to introduce the concept of estimation. Each child measured out a space with unifix blocks and guessed how many toys were in that space. Then they recorded that number and represented it with counters. They put all of their counters together and lined them up on the hundreds chart, one counter for each space. I kept waiting for this group to get frustrated or bored but each time they came to me all they said was "Now what?". That group estimated that there were eighty-six toys in the resource room. I didn't go and count but I'll bet they were pretty close! One of the boys from that group was interested in using the unifix blocks to measure the biggest toy in the resource room and so off he went again with a new partner. Lisa and Jacob measured a tunnel that was sixty-three blocks long! It went on and on. Data collection was certainly the busiest time during our project. I don't think I got a chance to take a single picture!

Sharing the Experiences with Others

The drawings had been done, the experts had come and gone, the data had been collected and represented and now it was time to share it all. I had planned for the culmination of our project to be the sharing of work with parents at a 'Celebration of Learning.' In preparation for that event I had the preschool children come in and buddy up each preschooler with one kindergarten student. The object was to have the children practice telling someone about their work. They led their buddies around the room and proudly showed and explained what they had done. Some even explained other's work and when the Celebration of Learning rolled around it was easy to see that the project had been one of the children's favorite kindergarten experiences. The parents seemed surprised, too, that the children were showing them 'sketches' and 'diagrams' and 'graphs'. After it was all over I sat in the classroom and thought about how I expected those parents, after seeing the project work, to respect their children's school work so much more. To recognize that they are capable of so much more than producing 'cute' stuff and 'playing around'. And I realized how much project work had changed my own thinking about play and work and I anticipated the beginning phase of my next project.

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Last revised: November 27, 1999