Video 26: Tall Painting, Tall Town – Part 2.

We never realized how deep this project would get but the children reached a variety of levels in understanding how communities develop and grow.

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The second part of this project was followed by a quick comment while the tall paintings were drying (see Tall Painting, Tall Town – Part 1): “They look like a town. This could be a street and this could be a school.”

The “main” building was quickly turned into “The Cool School.”

Every outing that followed was filled with comments like, “we could have this in our pretend town!” The children took walks and bike rides, timed distances and came up with their own measuring system for calculating distances. After looking at maps and having so many conversations about scales, feet, inches and miles (in that order!), they created a model that gave way to yet a third part in this project: designing maps! They are both involved in creating a “book of directions” at the moment and I might post it here some time soon. One of the kids came up with an idea of creating an audio CD that has tracks for each direction (i.e.: from the school to the art museum, from the school to 357 Anubis Street, etc). Both children have experience with their “directionally challenged” mother and my strong dependence on GPS systems so previous experience plays a huge role here : D

The best part of this portion of this project was the construction of knowledge that came from playing with models and discovering scales, inventing metric systems, drawing from previous experiences and making up new ones! There is so much more to explore. A new community is born : )

Set-Up for Episode #26:

Floor/Table space that can be used for a while
Tape
Scissors
Markers
Paper
Recycled materials
Clay
Playdough
Anything that children can use in addition to their tall painting to add to their models