As many of you saw at Parent Night, the children are very interested in being interviewed. An activity that began spontaneously with two aliens who wanted to speak to the world, has now become a daily phenomenon. Sometimes they pretend to be fantastical creatures and other times they are simply themselves. We have passed on the interviewing position to the students, as well. It is interesting to note that some children who had no wish to be interviewed have become the most eager interviewees.
The social and language practice involved in this process is overtly apparent. The children are practicing conversational language, where one must wait for another person to stop talking before they can interject. They are discovering the power of asking questions to find out information. The children are also seeing the importance of taking turns and allowing others to join and leave the play.
Mrs. Pless and I were so inspired by this new form of play, we ran out and grabbed our favorite giant box so that the children could move their play into “the media”. We imagined that we could start an entire project based on “shows”. We would create a TV together. The children could make remotes. (Since today’s televisions really don’t have any buttons on them that children would use.) We could compare plays to television, reality to fantasy. Our imaginations went soaring off into the sunset. So far, decorating our giant television has gone quite well, as you can see in the photos below. However, as usually happens when a grown-up has a plan, the children have other ideas.
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Today, the box was instantly dubbed a puppet theater and a home. While a group of children rushed to the art table to create finger puppets, another group set up house inside the box. Once the puppets were complete, the home owners were evicted and the puppets took possession. The only problem was that in order to hide from the audience, the children found they needed to lie down on the floor. This made puppet manipulation particularly difficult. Thus, a curtain was added to the theater. Now the puppets can pop out, but the puppeteers can sit safely hidden in the background.
As for the dreams of Mrs. Pless and Mrs. Forst, maybe the puppets will hold interviews?