Welcome to November!
I just wanted to share a few things we have done this past week.
Obviously, I was out on Wednesday and saw Dr. Wong. See my previous post reflecting on that opportunity! :)
But, we have been doing some pretty exciting things in room 9. I shared with my students the idea of the Cardboard challenge and Caine's Arcade. Check it out here! :)
The response was Overwhelming ... especially for me. I had already watched the videos and had been inspired myself. I cried watching the videos, but I was not prepared for the response it received from the 8 and 9 year olds in my classroom. They were FULLY engaged, and interested. They were amazed, in awe, and inspired. I had several students fighting back tears, and a few who couldn't resist the tears and let them out. THIS WAS SOMETHING SPECIAL. They watched this boy build something with his creativity, and how awesome it was. I didn't tell them anything about the video or the project, I just said I had some videos I wanted to share with them. Their immediate responses to the videos were, "I wish we could go there and play", "Could we take a field trip there?" "LA isn't that far, lets go visit him", "Can we do that?" "Let's make our own arcade", "we could invite all the homeless and the poor people to come play for free- -wouldn't that make them happy?" --- WHOA, that one caught me WAY off guard. HOW COOL IS THAT? An 8 year old student in my classroom in western downtown Urban Phoenix (who lives in poverty himself) thought by himself how awesome it would be to invite less fortunate people to come play for free because play would make them happy, and we could make them feel good. WOW! As I am typing this, I am getting tears in my eyes again ... I am completely inspired by these children, these people, who 13 weeks ago, refused to even talk in front of the class because they were "scared and shy". Now, here they are, completely on their own, exploring ways to make other people feel good about themselves. I am so very proud of the people they are becoming.
Anyway, we had a discussion and decided that we did, in fact, want to make our own cardboard arcade. We wanted to participate in the Cardboard Challenge. We talked about how we were going to have to find products, cardboard, recycled materials, cheap items from the 99 cent store, or dollar store. This again, has blown my mind. Here is a picture of boxes and items they have ALREADY brought in. They are so excited.
What you can't see is that most of the boxes have things in them. They are making and buying tickets to give out when people play their games, they are brining in their own old toys that they don't want anymore as prizes, or to use for their games (Notice the bag of army soldiers --- they're going to be playing soccer pretty soon:)) They are bringing in anything they can find that they think we could use. I can't wait to see their ideas come to life. They are SO inspired. We have decided that we will build and play the last 2 school days before Thanksgiving break. They are aware that we still have classroom learning to do but they have already started brainstorming ideas, some students have already started drawing out their plans.
I am so excited to see where their imagination and creativity takes them, and can't wait to come back and share a blog post about our project after it is finished. My students will be laughing at me that day - because I can guarantee that I will be in tears at their fantastic, magnificent imaginations.
~ Ms. Niehaus
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