Tape

A crosswalk, so the van slows down there

“Delivery van again today.”

A child fetched the van, drove it around the room, then came over.

“Can I put tape on the floor?”

An adult asked what for.

“The van goes along there, so a crosswalk would make it safer.”

“Make one, if you want to.”

“Yes!”

They got paper tape from the art corner, sat down on the floor and laid strips out — all about the same length, evenly spaced.

“What are you making?”

“It's a crosswalk.”

“Can I do it too?”

“Yeah!”

The other one came back with tape and pointed at the place where the van came through.

“Over here — they go this way, so shall I put an arrow going that way?”

“An arrow, yes. Oh, nice!”

When it was finished:

“Doesn't it look like a real crosswalk?”

An adult said the arrows were a good touch.

“The arrows were their idea.”

Then, to the van:

“Right, this is a crosswalk now, so you go slow here.”

A web on the wall, and then webs everywhere

There was a bug poster up, and they kept going back to the spider on it.

“We've seen loads of these. It was hanging on a web.”

“I want a web in our room too.”

An adult ran colored tape across the wall in a web.

They jumped at it to stick to it.

“I'm a spider!”

“You go first and then me.”

“If you stick, you win.”

Later that stopped being enough.

“I want to make a web too.”

So they took the tape and put webs wherever they wanted them, and brought over bugs they had colored in and stuck those on.

“There's a bug on my web!”

“There's a web here now too!”

In the afternoon they strung a web up and took turns flinging a spider at it. When it caught, that was the whole thing. When it missed, they threw again.

The short piece wasn't enough

“Shall we build the tree again, the one from yesterday?”

An adult asked how they wanted to build it this time.

“So it doesn't fall over.”

“How do we make it not fall over?”

“Stick it!”

Then, working out what with:

“With tape.”

They taped cups together, but the short pieces wouldn't hold them. Another child, watching:

“There's a long one here! Use this!”

Red paper tape. The two of them tore off lengths and joined the cups one at a time, changing how long the piece was, where it went, which way it ran.

“It's holding itself up! It won't fall now!”

“Let's put it somewhere it won't get knocked over.”

They walked around the room looking for an empty spot, and set it down there themselves.

It keeps sticking to my clothes

The igloo went up again the way it had the day before — a table and boxes for the frame.

The plastic sheet over the top kept sliding to one side, so they taped it to the table. The tape kept coming apart.

“It needs to be longer.”

They pulled off a longer piece and stuck that down instead.

Then, crawling in and out of the igloo:

“It keeps sticking to my clothes. I'll put paper on it.”

And they stuck paper over the tape.

The thin one let the wheel fall through

They had cardboard tubes from the day before and were rolling a wheel down them.

Nobody was fighting over turns. They waited while somebody else's wheel went, and said out loud what it was doing, and laughed.

To get the wheel from one tube to the next they taped the tubes together. The tape was thin, and the wheel dropped through the join.

“What about like this?”

One of them brought over thicker tape.

“No! Don't!”

And wouldn't let them do it.

That's the fishing line

They had been pulling up radishes the day before, so on the walk they were picking up leaves and seed pods.

“This acorn is a tiny one!”

They carried them back.

“What shall we make? Let's take them to school.”

Inside, they ran a long strip of paper tape out.

“That's the fishing line!”

The leaves and pods went onto the tape, and then the toy animals came over.

“Let's feed them!”

Our neighborhood, taped down

They wanted to build the neighborhood, so out came a big sheet of paper, colored pencils and road tape.

An adult taped the paper down on the table. They put the roads wherever they wanted and in whatever direction, and filled the space around them: home, the doctor's, the convenience store, the supermarket, the sky, a Halloween house, flowers, people, a dog.

“That's a person walking their dog.”

“The sky's red here.”

When it was done they asked for the whole thing taped to the table, and fetched small cars to drive on it.

Signs to go with the roads

The roads went down on the block track and across the floor in road tape, and then cars and buses and taxis started going along them.

They took turns and kept to the rules they had set.

Then came the signs — stop, crosswalk, school zone — and what each one meant. Some of them made their own out of colored tape and put them up along the road.

The lines that were left when the tape came off

They had been looking at a Kandinsky, the one with the diamonds, talking about which colors were in it and which ones they liked.

Then they wanted their own. Masking tape went down whichever way each of them wanted it, paint went over the whole thing, and it was left to dry.

Peeling the tape off was the part that made it a picture.

Caught in the web

Black paper tape went across most of the floor as a web, and there was a big spider hat to go with it.

They tried the hat on. It didn't fit the smaller heads, and some of them liked it better set down on the web than worn.

They walked the lines of the web. Then somebody dropped where they stood.

“I'm caught in the web!”

Later, the paper spiders from the day before needed hanging up, so white yarn went in and out through holes to make a web for them. Winding tape round the end of the yarn made it stiff enough to push through. It tore, it tangled, and they kept going until each spider was up.

It sticks to their hands first

Colored tape, pulled out long and laid down on the floor.

At first it stuck to their hands, and to itself. That got easier. Then came cutting it to the length they wanted, with scissors.

They put a piece down, pulled it up, moved it, put it down again — and out of that came a square, each one their own way.