AFC BIRCH: Map building

Maps and Lines

Familiar invitations, but with a twist!

Can you make map lines with playdough?

Can you build a map of our school with these materials?

What would our friends do?

It was a challenge to begin thinking in a new way.

Some friends sat down and immediately started building. I heard,

"This is my house." and "This is my sissy's playroom.", and "This is the ninja course."

Hmmm...where is your house in our school?

Is your sissy's playroom in our school?
Where is the ninja course in our school?

This opened up great conversation among the children and I. What do we notice about our school?

We are building a map of our SCHOOL, what should you put in your map?

"This is the place where those spray bottles are. And now I'm going to build the sink" CF

"This is the carpet right there."

"This side is cold water and this is hot. It's the sink!"

"This is the fish tank in that room. You know, I'll show you when we pass it."

"YES! It's a circle for the sand pit!"

Your map has parts of our entire school, the inside and the outside!

How do we get from the inside to the outside on your map?

"This is the map of our school!" EM

"That's the sand and that's the slide.

"That' the rock wall. You climb up here and you juuuuuuump!"

EM your map showed me the boundary of our school and then the playscape.

"This is the cave. I'm going to build it." RM

"I'm thinking in my mind what else. Oh! the rocks!"

RM your map showed me great details of a part of our school. I can see exactly where your map is telling me!

I'm going to make a whole new map.

"This is the tunnel and the climbing wall." CF

"These are the bricks."

Oh, it sounds like you are building the OUTSIDE of our school!

"These are the doors I come in."

I love the way you showed me how they open wide! I know exactly what doors you are talking about.

You showed me all the doors and all of the spaces you were creating. You built a map of the outside of our school walls, and then you started adding the outside spaces to it.

"This is the door., this is that place."

Oh! You are building a map of the inside of our classroom. If this is the safe space, what is this part here?

"The light table! And that carpet. I'm working on making this space."

MT built our classroom. AD build the outside walls. Is your map the inside or the outside, CW?

"Outside."

What outside part is it?

"Hillside."

I can see all the hills in your building! What else is on the hillside that you can add to toyour map?

LB, you stacked triangle after triangle and told me a story about trying again and again, trying your hardest. I told you it reminded me of the giant blue blocks in the collaoratory.

"Nope. It's the blocks in the gym."

Ah! I know what blocks you're talking about!

And then you added one more piece and told me

"I connected our maps!" LB

Wow! You made a map of one space in our school, and AD made a map of another space and then you connected them together to create one BIG map! That's amazing!

JL you and I talked for a long time about what it looks like to create a map of our school.

We noticed together what we have in our classroom.

"toys" JL

We do have a lot of materials in our room, you're right. What else do you notice that is on our classroom?

"The light table, and the small world."JL

Yes! I notice a lot of big things too, We talked about the tables in our room and you decided to use tiny cubes to add them to your map. At first you lined them all up next to one another along the top of your wall. I noticed out loud how the table in our room are all spread out. Kiss that smart brain, you figured out that your map tables needed to be moved too!