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Teachers often ask what they can do to encourage children to engage in dramatic play. Compromise is a skill that’s in short supply in our world, and it can’t happen without the bickering. This isn’t always the case, of course, but more often than not they come to recognize that they must dig down and around and around and straight and up until they find their way to a compromise that keeps their game going. Bickering is a tool that allows them to create agreement. But I’ve found that when children are accustomed to being left to their own devices, they most often use bickering like they do their shovels-as a tool. We worry it will lead to yelling or, worse, violence. Their self-created dramatic play curriculum was superficially composed of equal parts earth science, engineering, and geography, but the real molten core of their project was the imagination and the bickering.Īs adults, we too often underestimate the importance of bickering and react to it as something to control or guide. It didn’t end there, and I left them debating the relative virtues of various imaginary destinations. Then we’ll know we’re close to the magma.” They resumed digging in silence for a time, before one of them said, “We’ll stop digging when the ground gets hot.
#Building blocs full
“We can’t dig to the molten core! It’s full of lava!”
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“We’re going to dig it all the way to the molten core.” The boys bickered for several minutes, finally agreeing that it was a “very deep hole-trap.” “We’re not digging anywhere! This is a trap!” “Teacher Tom, we’re not digging to China.” I made a comment about digging to China, a destination my own playmates and I had aspired to reach lo these many years ago. Two boys were digging a hole in the sand pit. They are learning the skills that will make tomorrow. It’s easy to dismiss children’s dramatic play as silly, as a waste of time even, especially when we hear them intensely bickering over “truth,” but what they’re doing is exercising their imagination and creativity. It’s a venue for practicing the social necessities of negotiation, compromise, and agreement. It is a safe place in which to engage in higher order thinking and processing things they’ve been exposed to but don’t fully understand. It gives them the opportunity to work on understanding what goes on in other people’s minds. Building Crucial Skills Through Dramatic PlayĬhildren are learning many things as they engage in counterfactual play. On the other hand, counterfactual thinking is always the first step in changing the world from what it is to what it could be. We’re cursed with the ability to imagine an impossibly perfect world, which too often serves to make it even more difficult to make peace with the real one. In such contexts, it seems absurd to be arguing over truth, and adults often respond that way when they feel compelled to intervene, yet games like this are crucial for children seeking to understand their world.Īs far as we can tell, we’re the only species that regularly engages in counterfactual thinking, the phenomenon of imagining the world in ways contrary to or different from the way it is. The children I observed were engaged in a game in which they were asserting something that was objectively not true: that they were animal babies. And truth is always at stake when children are engaged in dramatic play.īy definition, dramatic play, like all fiction, is about the imagination, a place where truth is, at best, subjective. Listening to the two children, I didn’t say anything, but stepped closer because it was the sort of preschool argument that could escalate, which is always a risk when “truth” is at stake. “That’s not true! Polar bear babies eat tiger babies!” Build your home to be earthquake resistant with ICFs.“You can’t because tiger babies would eat polar bear babies.”
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ICFs are just one part to your wildfire protection strategy.Ĭoncrete structures can be among the safest and most durable types of structures in an earthquake. Walls made with ICFs withstand more than 4 hours of continuous fire and remain structurally sound protecting your home and belongings. Protecting you from flying debris and other dangers from tornadoes and hurricanes. Standard ICF walls withstand wind speeds of 200mph or more
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BuildBlock Insulating Concrete Forms (ICFs) vs Concrete Masonry Unit (CMU).