Category: #cardboardchallenge

Revisiting Messing About with Cardboard

10/16/2014

A selection of photos from our workshop:

This month's Messing About workshop also featured cardboard. Many of the teachers present had been participating in the #cardboardchallenge with the children in their classes and brought that excitement.

We also had three children attend the teacher workshop with us.

We noticed a series of 3d compositions were created - most of them were representational (ships, robots, pigs).

Where last month had produced such a wide variety of strategies for messing about, we wondered about the parallel work this month. Was this a product of the teachers' time messing about with the cardboard over the past month? Was this because it was the second workshop and some level of comfort had been established? Was this because the children present were so comfortable taking inspiration from the work around the room (where adults might feel uncomfortable "copying")?

A huge thank you to Ryan from ABC Imaging for the great donation of cardboard tubes

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Reflecting on Turning a Moment into a Movement

9/30/2014

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After hosting our workshop, and then serendipitously discovering the #cardboardchallenge, we naturally have a buzz of excitement going on here.

Not only do we have the opportunity to engage our own learning in addition to the children's learning, we also are finding ourselves immersed in a wider community of advocacy. Advocacy for honoring creativity. Advocacy for recognizing the capabilities and competencies of children. Advocacy for the participation in our world.

Maureen, one of the Boulder Journey School teachers who attended the workshop and interacts with us on social media, found the following article on Nirvan Mullick, the videographer who sparked this movement:
The Perfect Moment Goes Perfectly Viral

The article sparked a lot of questions for Maureen, who shared her curiosity:

I thought you would be particularly intrigued by the last paragraph, Mullick talks about "getting lost in something" and "perfect moments" and if we can create those moments for others...made me think about how we started our dialogue on the Hawkins Workshop night.

I am curious about Mullick's childhood and history. What have been the experiences that led him to advocating for children's inventiveness, creativity, play, etc.? Personally, I believe Mullick highlighted the genius/creativity present in ALL children. So how did Mullick get to where he is; to be an adult who chooses to put a spotlight on and advocate for this genius? It makes me curious how we can foster and develop this kind of advocacy in adults..what skills do adults need to be able to do what Mullick did(not necessarily using the same mediums)? What skills or prior experiences did Mullick have that led him to be able to "see" and cultivate this perfect moment with Caine and his Arcade? What made it a "perfect moment"? Was it only a perfect moment because it was shared?

David Hawkins referred to the times in the classroom when "discoveries are made, noted, lost, and made again". As Maureen reflected, there are so many perfect moments with children; how do we choose? How do we know which ones will ignite?

We see this in classrooms which engage an emergent curriculum as well, as we move through the three phases of Messing About, sometimes the paths from the triangle phase take off, and sometimes they quietly fade out.

Tell us about your processes: how do you decide which moments to highlight, to follow? Which media do you use as your platform for advocacy?

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Messing About with Teaching: The Pilot Workshop - #Cardboardchallenge

9/26/2014

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What does it mean to engage? to learn? to play?

In partnership with Boulder Journey School, we offered cardboard to a group of teachers to play with. Inspired by the three-phase cycle of messing about, we took time to openly explore, to declare our intentions, and to reflect.

We chose cardboard as a material to mess about with because it is an eolithic find - it is easily accessible and often thrown away. All they had to do was ask and Boulder Journey School was flooded with cardboard of all shapes and sizes. We also chose cardboard because it is such a friendly material - it is lightweight, transformable, and its possibilities are endless.

One teacher began the evening with a big burst of gross motor - she invited the participants to play hide-and-seek. Once she’d explored the room this way, she crawled inside a box and drew representations of the evening. We wondered whether children have this same need - to own the space physically before settling in.

One teacher went large. She built and constructed and worked on her own. When asked about her creation, she said she preferred not to share - until the end when she felt comfortable explaining both her vision and her process. We wondered how many children have this similar need to focus without explaining.

One teacher created a 3d representational collage. She didn’t intend to - she just started making and watched where it went.

Another teacher created a 3d non-representational collage. She did mean to. She remarked she had long been drawn to the texture of the a cross-cut of cardboard and wanted to play with that. Another teacher, drawn from her own construction, joined in the texture exploration.

One teacher found interactive games to create in the cardboard. She worked on different pieces and saw the possibilities for engaging her work with others.

One teacher engaged with the cardboard in a fluid kinetic-sculpture type of way while traveling around the room to dialogue with other teachers. Her cardboard changed shapes and configurations as she moved.

We wondered at the individual projects we encountered. Was there a necessary piece to the parallel play that we engaged in? What would it have taken for us to engage in collaborative play? Was it safer to be engaged separately with the same material while we are still getting to know each other?

We wondered how the children would engage with the cardboard the following day?

The following day we discovered the Imagination Foundation's Global Cardboard Challenge. In collaboration with Boulder Journey School, we are hosting our own #cardboardchallenge to celebrate every day as a day for play! Click here to visit our challenge page. Follow us on twitter (@hawkinscol) to keep track of our adventures as well!

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Revisiting Messing About with Cardboard

Reflecting on Turning a Moment into a Movement

Messing About with Teaching: The Pilot Workshop - #Cardboardchallenge

Hawkins Centers of Learning

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