Corn blocks · Play kitchen · Play tents · Bottles · Colored paper cups · Toy microphones · Mirrors · Colored paper · Water guns
Corn blocks
The stickers, then
The autumn tree was ready before they were. A paper plate, branches made out of kitchen roll tubes, and the corn blocks cut in half in autumn colors, waiting to be dabbed and pressed on.
Nobody came.
Teacher Yepark put four things out where they could be seen — the corn blocks, cellophane, jewel stickers, colored pencils.
“Which of these would you like to use?”
A finger went out and landed on the jewel stickers.
So the jewel stickers it was, and the tree stayed as it was.
Somebody else picked up a handful of corn blocks and shook them, and then started lifting them towards a mouth, which is a different thing to have to say something about.
Later that week there was a dragonfly on a stick up on the wall, made for the room rather than for them. That one they wanted. It got jewel stickers all over it.
The market stall was where they wanted to be, but not for selling anything. They wanted to be underneath it, and the underneath of it was boarded round, so a child down there could not be seen at all.
So Teacher Yepark cut two big windows into the front and covered them with clear plastic, and put a roof on the top of it, and it stopped being a stall.
They went straight in with blocks and food from the kitchen set.
“Let's play hide and seek!” — from inside it.
And from outside, through the plastic, a face looking in at them.
The one who had always liked being under the table liked this better.
The cardboard house had a door on it, and the door had a flap that needed lifting and holding open.
Nobody used it.
They went in through the window. They went in through whichever hole was nearest. Two of them met halfway, one going in and one coming out, and neither could get past the other.
Teacher Yepark did not fix the door.
She put a tent up next to the house.
After that there were two places to be inside of, and the traffic sorted itself out — some in the house, some in the tent, one at a time instead of all at the same hole.
The crayons went in with them, and the stickers, and by the end of it the walls had been drawn on from the inside too.
The plan for the morning was telescopes. Cardboard tubes, and bottles to look through.
Bori put a toy car inside a bottle instead.
“Brrm brrm.”
That was the end of the telescopes. Everybody wanted a car and a bottle.
Teacher Yepark cut a tube in half lengthways and laid it down as a slope, and the cars went down it.
“Shooo.”
Then one of them came back from the bookshelf with a book about a car wash, and sat down with it, and Bori came and sat down too. Halfway through, a finger went onto the page.
“Wheels. Wheels.”
After that every car in the room got picked up and turned over, so its wheels could be pointed at.
Pink cups and pale blue ones, and a tower that Teacher Yepark built so that it could be knocked down.
Bori swung an arm through it once, and went off to find something else.
So the cups went up onto the wall instead, taped to the felt board.
Bori came back for that. Not for the cups. For the tape — for getting hold of an end, pulling it off, and then looking for the next one.
What kept it going The tower was built to be knocked down, which is the part adults plan for. What was new in the room that morning was the tape, and that is what Bori stayed for.
Yesterday's microphones were still in the room, and the first thing that happened to one of them was that it went into a mouth like an ice cream.
“The microphone has turned into an ice cream,” said Teacher Yepark, and sang the one about eating everything up.
Later there was a box with holes in it. “There's a hole here. What's this hole for?” A microphone went into it to show. They posted them in for a while and then stopped, so the box got covered in glue and colored paper instead, and then the posting started up again.
Then the mirror ball went on.
“Oh.”
“Wow.”
Teacher Yepark held out the blocks and said they could build a stage.
They touched the blocks. Then they went up the slide and sang from the top of it.
So the mirror ball got lowered to where they were, and the music went on, and sunglasses came out — on, off, on again — and the singing carried on from up there.
The corn blocks had been cut in half beforehand, so that a whole one would not have to be held in a whole hand.
That part worked. They picked them up fine.
“Onto the wipe — one, two, three, press,” said Teacher Yepark, and did it again, and said it again.
What most of them wanted was the other thing. Once a corn block was on the paper it could be pulled back off the paper, and then it could be put on and pulled off again.
So Teacher Yepark held them on the wipe herself, and passed each one over ready to stick, and the sticking happened in between all the unsticking.
Paper plates and glue and cut-up colored paper, and the glue went on the plates for them.
Some of them put a piece of paper on and pulled it off, and put it on again.
Bori did not put any on at all. Bori put the plate into the basket the paper was in, and took it out again, and put it in again.
The one on the other side of the table stayed for half an hour, gluing and sticking and unsticking, and at the end pointed at the plate and then at their own chest.
The plates went up on the wall, low down, and they came and found their own.
They had done water guns the day before, so they knew to bring their own out. Some had the kind you strap on like a backpack, and those were heavy.
“I don't want to use mine today.”
There were spare ones from the room, so those came out too.
“What water gun thing are we doing today?”
“The sun is strong today,” said Teacher Yubok, “so we're drawing on the ground with water.”
“Yes!”
Then Chaewon looked at the ground, which was already drying where somebody had spilled.
“But can we draw with something that isn't water too?”
So chalk came out as well. And once there was chalk on the ground, the water guns had something better to do than draw: the chalk stayed where it was put until the water hit it, and then it went.
It was hot out, so the water guns came from home and they took them along the walking path, filling them and watering the trees and the grass as they went.
Then Chaewon looked up at the tallest tree and said something else was going on.
“There's a fire!”
Which turned every water gun on the path into a hose. They gathered underneath it.
“Let's go put it out together.”
Once the fire was out they turned on the dry ground instead, drawing hearts and lines into it, watching the water spread out past the edges of the shapes.
3–5noticing other childrencommunicationpretend play