Play doh castle inquiry

Play Doh Castle Inquiry

 

April 28, 2014

 

            Shaylene and I created a beautiful display of our nature items on the back table today.  It was neatly arranged in a nice basket with all kinds of different containers that the children could use to sort their items into.  We were not sure how the play would end up looking, but thought this was a good start.  Well, it flopped!  Nobody went to it during thinking and learning time.  We discussed it again that evening.  We thought we should give it some time.  The next two days were the same.  The children were intrigued by it, but didn’t actually go there during thinking and learning time.  So, the discussion ended up around how we could fix that.  What could we add to make them go there.  The solution that we came up with was play doh.  That evening, we each made a batch of play doh.  The next day, it completely changed!

 

May 1, 2014

 

            It took a few minutes before the children noticed the play doh, but then it took off!  Children were making all sorts of things like balls, snakes, snowmen, and little houses. 

 

Ms. Stacey: “How are we going to take care of this play doh?”

S.F.: “We have to put it away each night so that it doesn’t go hard.”

Ms. Stacey:  “Ok.  That sounds good.  Just to let you know that this is all the play doh we are making this week.  If it goes hard, there will be no more.”

 

            The children were having a ball.  Then, S.F., A.W., and E.R. decided they would make a castle.  They started to make the tops of the towers. 

 

            That evening, the conversation continued around the new play doh/nature area.  We discussed the castle and what we could do to help enhance the learning.  I went online and found a book about castles that was above their level, but had great pictures.  I would show it tomorrow on the smart board.

 

May 2,2014

 

            During morning meeting, we looked at the castle book on our smart board.  The children decided that they loved the pictures.  This picture brought about a lot of discussion.

 

“What are the round parts for?”

“Why is it built in water?”
“How did they make the round parts?”

“How did they make it stay up in water?”
“How did they build it in the water?”

 

There were so many wonders!  After the meeting, we put the pictures up on the wall by the castle play doh area hoping it would spark some ideas.  S.F. went right over there and got to work.  Her and a few friends started to build, but were then called out to practice for the school play. 

 

The conversation that night after school revolved around bringing in items to help get their imaginations going.  We needed to find a way to bring writing into the inquiry and get some work from the children, not just building. 

 

On the weekend, I bought some picture frames.  We put them at the inquiry area.  We talked about them at our morning meeting, but the girls who were interested in the castle inquiry were away because of play practice again.  The rest of the week seemed to follow the same idea.  Finally, on Friday of that week, when we thought all hope was gone for the inquiry area, S.F. decided to draw a picture to go in a frame.  A.A. also made a picture with labels on it.  Here they are:

We figured our castle play doh inquiry was well on its way.  Wrong again!  There just didn’t seem to be any interest in it.  I tried to talk with some children about using other materials to build the castle and the play doh could act like the glue to hold it together.  We discussed our snowman hut building that we did.  T.D. seemed very excited about it. 

 

T.D.: “We can use egg cartons like we did in our snowman hut building contest.  Maybe we could win this time!”

Ms. Stacey: “Well, we are not having a competition this time, but yes.  You can certainly use the egg cartons.  Is there anything else we could use to help build it?”

S.F.: “What about some cylinders?”

Ms. Stacey: “Sure.  Why don’t you look around in our art studio to see what you could use.  I will come back in a bit to see what you have done.”

 

I left them, looked over in a few minutes and they were gone.  It went all the way until today, May 14^th with nobody coming to it.  I finally said this morning that I need to go into the inquiry and “play”.  I told the children at the morning meeting that I was going to the play doh and I was just going to play and try to come up with some ideas for building the castle.  S.F., A.W., LM.W., H.W, and R.H. said they were going to come with me. 

 

During thinking and learning time, I grabbed some egg cartons and started to put them together to make a big open cube.  H.W. helped me with the tape and coming up with ideas for the turrets.

 

H.W.: “What if we use some paper towel rolls?  That would work.”

Ms. Stacey: “What a great idea.  Do we have any?”

 

We looked but could not find any.  Then, S.S. came over and had an idea.

 

S.S.: “We can use the big small ones.”

H.W.: “And we can tape them together to make them taller.”

 

We worked together and ended up with the walls of the castle done and the four turrets.  That is when H.W. came up with the idea to put play doh along the top of the turrets in triangles to look like the bump parts of them.  We intended to keep them out (S.F., A.W., and LM.W., all helped with this) and let them try on the turrets, but I accidentally asked H.W. to clean up all of the play doh.  LM.W. noticed so I told her I would help make new ones after.

 

Throughout the day, numerous children decided to help out.  S.F. wanted to help with the draw bridge.  After I cut the egg carton walls to make one, she decided that it should be brown like wood.  LM.W. said that if we paint it in straight rows of brown, it would look like wood. Then we could use gold dots to make it look like nails. 

 

A.W.: “How can we make the chains to bring the drawbridge up and down?”

S.F.: “Maybe we can use string.”

LM.W.: “I think we should try chains. But how?”

Ms. Stacey: “Well, what did we do with our big castle that we made in our class?”

LM.W.: “We used rope, not string.”

 

Then, R.H. was playing at the play doh and created a little creature. He brought it over to me.

 

R.H.: “Ms. Stacey, we can make these to play with in the castle when they are all finished. They can be the people.”

Ms. Stacey: “That’s perfect.  That could be their face (a round bead in the middle of the head)”

R.H.: “Well, they are kind of like one-eyed aliens! Haha!”

 

 

So, the interest has finally come back.  It looks great. Hopefully, we can finish it up this week so that the kids have somewhere to play.

Our draw bridge has now been painted.  H.W. thought it would look great in brown and they (him and E.R.) painted it by making dots on it so that it would look like wood and natural.  The little spikes kind of things (don’t know what they are called, maybe we could research the names) on top of the turrets are now made as well.  H.W. made them out of play doh.  We are going to leave it out to let the play doh dry and harden.  I am excited to see how the children play with this after it is finished.