provide insights into day-to day living and inspire creativity in
learning. By Diane Rich, Mary Jane Drummond and Cathy Myer
In a small one-class entry infant school in a large industrial city, the staff entered on a month-long investigation of furniture. Each class took a different theme, focusing on a different aspect of this enormous topic.
To enrich the youngest children's domestic play, the educators in this class embarked on an investigation of launderette furniture. Some children had been playing with bubbles in the water tray. One child remarked, 'It's like a washing machine.' Another ran to the book box and found a storybook with launderette washing machines on the front cover, called The Frogs Go on Holiday. The children asked the teacher to read it aloud to them and when she did, one child asked, 'Is there really such a thing as launderettes?'
The very next day a small group set off to find out. They returned delighted with the proclamation, 'Launderettes are really, really real and they have loads of good things in them.'
But what exactly? The next day another small group set off to investigate: what do launderettes have in them? They returned bursting with an answer, 'Machines... machines is what they have. All different ones. Washing machines, spinning machines, drying machines, money change machines, washing powder machines and big bag machines in case you've lost your big bag.'
While other delegations visited the launderette throughout the week to find out about launderette life, the remaining children set about recreating a launderette world by making launderette furniture. In less than a week, the corridor outside this part of the school (the class shared two large adjoining rooms) was transformed. A long row of washers and driers, created from a fine collection of cardboard boxes, stood on one side, and on the other, a row of chairs labelled with the name and logo of this flourishing establishment.
The children played launderettes in their newly created role-play area. At most times of the day a group of mothers and fathers, with their babies in buggies, could be found sitting in the launderette, gossiping about their children's illnesses, the price of soap, the length of the wash cycle, or reading magazines and making shopping lists as they waited for their load to finish. Service washes were available and dry cleaning was taken in.
Two busy employees checked in loads of washing, ticking off items and estimating prices and delivery times. There was often a great drama about a missing sock or shirt.
When monsters or robbers appeared, they usually brought a bag of washing with them to put through a wash cycle, waiting patiently as true launderette customers do, before resuming their monster or robber behaviour.
MIXED-AGE GROUPS
The rest of the school was organised into four parallel mixed-age classes of five-, sixand seven-year-olds. The teachers consulted each other and decided on different approaches to the common enquiry, basing their choices on children's current interests and selecting a different curricular focus from their most recent whole-class enquiry.
Folding furniture
Day after day parents arrived at the classroom door with deckchairs, high-chairs, camp beds, shooting sticks, camping tables and chairs, buggies, card tables, step ladders and more - much more.
These objects were investigated, drawn and labelled and their working explained. Then the model making began, at first with art straws. But the children were soon dissatisfied with folding furniture that didn't fold properly. More problem solving. More attentive study of the deckchairs - the favourite items in the collection (despite the squeezed fingers).
The three bears' furniture
One class of children were deeply into traditional fairy tales and so the three bears' house was set up. The construction work was challenging. The task of building two chairs that would hold the children's weight and a third that would collapse to order, proved almost endlessly demanding, but was eventually mastered by the children.
The beds were easier, thanks to Community Playthings. The kitchen furniture was no problem, and then the cooking could begin. The head teacher recorded in her log, ruefully, that she had never eaten so much porridge. On some days bears could be seen in the launderette, bringing a bag of washing to do while the porridge cooled down.
Kitchen furniture: a fridge
Another class chose to investigate one aspect of kitchen furniture: the fridge. There were many expeditions to the fridge in the school cooking area, to take temperatures and to collect ice cubes to experiment and re-experiment. They spent a long time researching this interesting question: how many times will the same piece of ice melt and re-freeze? This enquiry was curtailed by the weary teacher after 13 repeats. She urged the children to move on. A lost opportunity perhaps?
The fridge in the school kitchen was explored, measured, drawn and labelled, its contents inventoried and the school cook interviewed. The resourceful class teacher discovered a site in the city's industrial zone where discarded refrigerators were stored before being destroyed. She collected two specimens, one large and one small and brought them into the classroom. Children, of course, were instructed about the dangers of actually going inside a fridge.
Much purposeful activity followed, as every constituent part of the fridges was investigated, compared, contrasted and discussed. To conclude the project, the logic of 'things' gave way to the logic of the imagination and the children filled the refrigerators with 3D models of food: for a giant in the large fridge, and food for a witch in the small one. The green and slimy potions that filled the witch's fridge were unforgettable. Some of the parents were amused but not complacent. 'Wherever have the children seen such loathsome little green dishes before?' they wondered.
Office furniture
Two part-time teachers planned an enquiry into office furniture. One of them led the factual side of the project and small groups of children visited the school office to explore the mysteries of filing cabinets, word processors, revolving chairs, photocopiers and phones.
They completed inventories and interviewed the office staff. They measured the time it took to word process a letter on the computer and the time it took to write one by hand. They discussed the reason for each item of furniture being in the office and, in the course of the discussion, worked on the big ideas of fitness for purpose and the relationship between form and function.
The second teacher took charge of recreating an office in the classroom as a stimulus for office play.
This is an edited extract from First-Hand Experience: what matters to children - an alphabet of learning from the real world
EXPLORING FURNITURE
Big ideas to explore
- Form and function
- Fitness for purpose
- Adaptability
- Substitutes
- Diversity
Verbs
- Collect
- discuss
- visit
- draw
- design and make
- polish
- compare and contrast
- deconstruct
- reassemble
- evaluate
- decorate
- reduce and enlarge
Discuss...
- the functions of furniture for sitting on, sleeping on, eating at, working at, relaxing in
- the variety of furniture in kitchens, bedrooms...
Visit...
- an auction room
- a department store furniture department
- factories a church
- a museum a banqueting hall
- a narrow boat
- a caravan a gurdwara
Make
- Design and make furniture for kings and queens, a giant, a baby or a doll's house.
- Make the bed for the princess from the story The Princess and the Pea.
Investigate...
- ways of making a table bigger or smaller
- ways of folding furniture up small
- ways of storing tiny objects and huge objects.
Questions worth asking
- Why are there so many kinds of beds, chairs, tables and cupboards?
- Why do cats and dogs have beds, but not chairs or tables?
- What would you do if you didn't have any furniture?
Materials
- What is furniture made of? Why? Why not?
- Is the piece of furniture old or new? Precious or cheap? Hand-made or mass-produced? Decorated or plain? Shiny or soft? Suitable for outdoors or indoors?
FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE
First-Hand Experience: what matters to children by Diane Rich, Mary Jane Drummond and Cathy Myer, with Annabelle Dixon (Rich Learning Opportunities, £25), is now available in a new revised edition.
A thought-provoking book, it takes the form of an alphabet of learning through real-world experiences, with each page developed as a springboard for exploration. So, B is for 'bags and brushes', J is for 'joining', P is for 'pattern' and U is for 'under my feet'.
The elements of each page include: what matters to children; things to do and investigate; big ideas; questions worth asking; and suggested books and stories.
The authors are well-known education researchers and consultants.
To order a copy of the new or original (entitled Learning: what matters to children, 2008, £25) editions, or both (£46 for the two), and read about the authors, visit www.richlearning opportunities.co.uk.