Controlled Chaos

On Monday, Miss D's son, Miss K's daughter, and my daughter decided to build a pink tower/brown stair extension, and then they flipped the brown prisms on their ends and built a brown skyscraper. (Find pictures of pink tower/brown stair extensions here.)

Then the building got...interesting:



At first I was hesitant, and then I became complicit. First of all, it's not like there were any other students in the classroom waiting to use the materials (Miss C's crew wasn't with us, and the 2-year-olds were otherwise occupied). Second, I realized I'd be able to do a three-period lesson on a lot of the things the kids got out. Third, everything they got out would have to be put away, which is a learning experience in and of itself. Finally, the kids worked together so nicely that it was hard to deny them.

Thus, "What else can we use, Miss Jennie?"

"Why don't you grab the geometric solids?"
"Why don't you get the hundred squares and thousand cubes?"
"Why don't you use the knobless cylinders?"
"Why don't you grab the binomial and trinomial cubes?" (Cue the mad scientist laughter - bwah hah hah hah hah!!)

In the end, the kids ended up building with - and then properly using - the pink tower, brown stair, long red rods, red and blue rods, color box 2, the geometric solids, all five colors of sorting bears, the baric tablets, the sound cylinders, all four sets of knobless cylinders, the hundred squares and thousand cubes, dominoes, and the binomial and trinomial cubes - not bad for a day's work!

For PE, Miss D led the kids in bowling and calisthenics.

We closed with the "T" verse and story from My ABC Bible Verses: "Thou shalt not steal," Exodus 20:15.