Thinking Inside the Box

This is a love story. 

A love story about 

the Sky Class, 

the Trees Class,

...and a box. 

Having just had conferences, the Twenty Habits are fresh in all of our minds.  We heard about them a lot in conjunction with our very well planned "First Six Weeks" curriculum. 

But, like all great love stories, something wonderfully unplanned has happened in our lives. And, fortunately for all of us, at Mustard Seed School the unplanned is never considered "extracurricular." 

We embrace an emergent curriculum. 

The thing about emergent is ... it can happen at any moment. In worship, in the middle of a lesson, or even at the park. 

And this, dear reader, is where our story begins...

Once upon a time, the Sky Class and the Trees Class went to the park as usual. They were just out of worship and we had heard all about Sukkoth. Like any festival day, energy was high and the children were ready to play. 

We found the playground as it usually was. The slide stood tall and proud, the monkey bars shone in the sunlight, the climbing ropes dared us to conquer them, and the merry-go-round waited with playful expectation. 

Except for one thing. A box, seemingly brand new, was sitting unashamedly under a park bench. A few children approached it with cautious interest. It was big. It was empty. Then they looked me. I smiled and nodded. "Could it be?" their expressions said, "We really get to play with this box?" 

"It's really .. not 'closed'?" one of them asked. 

I nodded. 

"It's 'available'???" another clarified. 

I nodded again. 

And so it began...

Immediately, it was a tunnel. Both ends were open and bodies quickly crawled through and bounced back to the other side to crawl through again. Creativity and imagination were at work. 

"I'm stuck in tunnel traffic!" 

"Help a traffic jam!" 

"Help the tunnel is collapsing!" 

"It's not a tunnel! It's a whale and it's swallowed me down!"

More and more children joined and this game continued for a number of minutes.

Then, halfway through a crawl, one child stood up. He was wearing the box! Immediately this became the goal. One, two, three of us figuring out how to get into the box.  As both ends were open, we could sort of move about like an amoeba. This took teamwork, problem-solving, flexibility and coordination. 

Eventually, the joyful box hive of children tipped over and in their joyful struggle to right themselves, the box ripped and they spilled out. 


















But the children were undaunted, and they changed modes quickly, embracing the flatness of the box and it became a dance floor...
















Another child came along and wanted very much to be inside the box again. He led a whole experiment in creating ways to hide inside the now flattened box. 

Suddenly there were great dangers from which we needed to be hidden! Good Guys were trapping Bad Guys inside, who then created many ways of escaping! The most satisfying of which was to roll around with the box all around you until you enemy was disoriented and then you would burst free!

 










And then... the dragon came. It was not a dragon of terror. Or of hunger. Or of destruction. 

It was a dragon of joy! 

It started as the very small idea of a dragon, and it grew into a sort of a train game. Then the train people were convinced it was, in fact, a dragon and the dragon spread its joy far and wide around the playground.

Click here to see the raw footage...

Hearing the gathering clap, the children dutifully scattered and lined up, but then looked longingly at the abandoned box. And so when I scooped it up and asked them to carry it back to the classroom, there was much rejoicing. 

... a little too much rejoicing. So here are the children showing me that they can handle the excitement of the box coming in by still following directions in the hallway. 

And so the box was brought back to the classroom!

With all the creativity,

      teamwork, 

problem-solving,

fun, 

and love that came with it. 

Oh!

And we even made a sukkah! 

This was hard work. Originally it kept collapsing...

So the students tried a lighter canopy,

and pillows for support...

"Welcome in!"

Fantastic!

We really have had so much fun!

And worked hard, and learned so much.

... And had lots to celebrate.

Remember that hug picture from a few blogs back?

That actually started from working together with this box.

And it grew ...

and grew ...

 ...and took over the whole classroom.

It was a dragon of a hug! 

And that is our love story...

(and the story of about exactly 20 out of  'Twenty Habits'...
Click the link if you don't believe me!)

that all started...

 ...with a box.