The boys!! The group of rough and tumble, high energy, super hero loving boys that keep us guessing. Who are they? What do they want from us? How can we capture their attention and engage them?
Here’s an idea that came to me in the dark of the night and worked!!
A quest!
The next morning the boys were given their first quest, just before they began to play, an educator approached six boys gathering in the block area, the conversation began like this “…I have a quest for you! It’s a tricky one…and I think only the bravest children in our class could do it!! Do you think you can do it?” the boys immediately stood up and surrounded the educator,
Jerome shouts “I’m brave!! I can do it!”
Joshua says “Ya me too! I’m brave!!”
The educator responds by saying “Ok, here is your quest, show me how you could move something without using your hands”
Just like that, they were on a mission. One child ran over to the shelf and grabbed a blue plastic car and placed it on the carpet, he knelt down close to the ground and began to attempt blowing the car to move it with little success. Another child stood and observed for a moment and then placed a red car on a flat surface and he too began to use air and blew the car forward-success. As the educator observed two more boys had grabbed different cars and attempt another approach to move the cars. They stacked long wooden blocks stacked on the surface of the carpet, and they added one additional long block to create a ramp. They placed the car with their hands on the very top of the ramp, they put their hands down to the floor and blew the car until it began to roll all by itself down the ramp they created. They also successfully completed this mission.
Literacy:
The children then had to draw, label and share with the rest of the class how they completed this mission.
Journey Together FDK 