Last week I entered the k/1 classroom right in the middle of their Creative Time! The kids were hard at work at three different stations: clay, sculpture, beading, and play dough. I sat down next to Ender who was already hard at work on a clay sculpture. I asked him what he was making. “This is a target (Target) with a basketball in it.”
Okay. So I knew that many of these kids were interested in guns, war, fighting, etc. (which we know is normal!). So my first instinct was that this “target” was a target you shoot at. Next to me Clayton describes his sculpture “Isn’t this awesome? It shoots bullets. And look at it. It can also turn into a sword!” So my assumption that this “target” was for shooting was grounded in prior experiences! As I questioned Ender further about his work it became clear that this was a Target – the store! Ah! Now it made sense (how could a target have a basketball in it?) Ender pointed out the shelves he had made on each side of the Target and informed me what was on each shelf: “Look. A Pokémon card! But there’s one more thing…it’s a basketball, a Pokémon card, and a cell phone!” At the same time, Ender was also constructing a self-portrait out of clay: “Look it. I’m already a teenager!” I asked him what he liked to do as a teenager: “I like to go to Target and buy basketballs, Pokémon cards, and cell phones!” Ender worked tirelessly on this sculpture. He added another shelf with a Hershey’s bar on it, and then added price tags for each product being sold in the store, drawing numbers on each tag. There are lots of things we could talk about in response to this work: the way children incorporate their interests and daily experiences into their artwork, the way they think about their future selves and roles, the presence of consumerism and money exchanges in our lives, etc. But for now I will leave you with a simple idea – it’s okay to ask children what they are making! Sometimes I think we fear this question (will they feel bad if they think we don't inherently understand their work). In my experience this is not true, and we often miss so much by remaining silent as children work or thinking we understand. This exchange with Ender is a great reminder that the child is always the expert on their own work and it is often more interesting then we could ever imagine!
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