How the World Works: Making connections between design and creation

The K2 children have been busy both on Zooms and with the asynchronous home learning (huge thanks to all of you parents!), which ensures they are developing all approaches to learning that will enable them to make connections between concepts within the unit of inquiry. Once they have consolidated their knowledge of 2D and 3D shapes, and has had lots of practice making their thinking visible through drawing, it successfully sets them up for next steps in the inquiry process. 

In the past 2 weeks, children have been focusing on these lines of inquiry:

• Function - how we design and create
• Causation - the choices we make in the process of design and creation

Using their imagination and creativity, what choices will the children make to bring their ideas to life? How can we turn a 2D design into a 3D creation? Using materials in their home environment, children have been playing and working hard at making connections between design and creation. Let's take a look:

When it comes to design, both the process and the product is equally important, and for our young learners, we want to develop their awareness of themselves as thinkers. As teachers and parents, we can support this by asking them constructive questions. Here are some ideas:

Let's see what these constructive questions might look like in action:

• "Ohh I can see the roof of your fort is very pointy, just like in your design! I wonder where this pointy idea came from. Have you seen something like this in real life or was it from your imagination?"
• "If you were to make a round roof, what materials might you use or add to your creation?"

• "I've love to know more about what your first step was in making this car. What part(s) did you start with, and why?"
• "Is there another way you could construct the wheels?"
• "A bigger toy might not be able to fit through the door, what could we do in that case? What changes might you need to make to your design and creation?"

Children feel immense pride when they receive positive feedback about their learning, but at the same time, they also crave possibilities for improvement. When we talk about improvement, it doesn't mean that they didn't do a "good enough job", it simply means expanding their current thinking and considering how they might take their learning further- these possibilities can be very exciting for young children!