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Early childhood education has been my life for over 40 years. I have taught all age groups from infants to 5-year-olds. I was a director for five years in the 1980s, but I returned to the classroom 22 years ago. My passion is watching the ways children explore and discover their world. In the classroom, everything starts with the reciprocal relationships between adults and children and between the children themselves. With that in mind, I plan and set up activities. But that is just the beginning. What actually happens is a flow that includes my efforts to invite, respond and support children's interface with those activities and with others in the room. Oh yeh, and along the way, the children change the activities to suit their own inventiveness and creativity. Now the processes become reciprocal with the children doing the inviting, responding and supporting. Young children are the best learners and teachers. I am truly fortunate to be a part of their journey.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

BOX TOWER 2

I make a box tower every year.  One year when I was ready to make a box tower, I did not have a long,
rectangular box.  Instead, I found three boxes I could stack on top of each other to make a tower.  I started with a base box that fit neatly inside the table.  I taped the flaps shut and then made a hole on top, approximately in the middle.



















Next, I took a smaller box and cut a hole in the bottom to match the hole of the base box.


I taped the holes of the two boxes together by first cutting holes in two of the sides of the second box so I could reach in and align the two holes.  I then taped the second box to the top of the base box all around the sides.

Finally, I took a third, smaller box and attached it to the second box in the same way to finish the tower.



One of the pluses of a box tower like this is that now there are more levels on which to operate because the ledges formed by stacking the boxes add additional levels.  In addition, the spaces that are formed inside each of the boxes at each level encourage further exploration of novel spaces.  And children will explore all levels and all spaces from top to bottom.





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