Children Constructing Their World

Shelves full of wooden blocks hold the building units needed for a child to construct the world.  These simple cubes, rectangles and triangles exist as the concrete equivalent of a child’s imagination.  Towers grow from simple rows and stacks, towers containing the world of childhood, and examining the elusive world of adults.  Pieces of wood strengthen the fingers of toddlers and the friendships of schoolmates.  The medium is as simplistic and complex as a child’s world.

 What Can Playing With A Pile Of Blocks Teach?

Quite A LOT!

The concept of Kindergarten originated with Friedrich Froebel  in 1840.  A strong believer that children learned through play, he developed sets of wooden building blocks for play and teaching that he referred to as “Gifts.”  Caroline Pratt later developed standards for a set of blocks we now refer to as “Unit Blocks” that are used in Kindergartens today.  From these “Unit Blocks” a child can play and learn all the elements needed in education through the first grade and beyond. 

 So….

What Can Be Learned?

Math   Space, Shape, Counting, Patterns, Size, Fractions, Symmetry

Science   Gravity, Planning, Problem Solving,  Balance, Cause and Effect, Inductive Thinking

Art   Pattern, Creativity, Design, Order, Symmetry, Self-Expression

Literacy   Reading “Visual Directions,” Naming, Labeling, Discussion and Planning

Oral Language   Story Sequence with Role Playing, Directions for Clean-up, Directional Words

Come Learn and Build with us at DreamArc

I started a drawing, our families portrait for the website, before I went to pick up the children and a friend of theirs. After getting home, a neighborhood child came to play. The girls are busy creating on the family computer. (The one for sticky fingers…although, they are supposed to wash hands first. The video card is shot and the screen wavers, causing nausea in adults, but apparently it does not affect sticky fingered children) The boys were outside ridding the yard of “Invisible Bad Guys.” Apparently, all the invisible bad guys are gone now, and I don’t see any visible ones left either. So, they have moved inside to destroy the invisible peace in the house.

BUT…..You know how it is once you start a project, a FUN project. You just don’t want to stop, even to protect the house from four foot tall defenders.

So, I have been hiding in the “Office.,” formerly dining room, and drawing. Taking breaks to yell, “Leave the furniture alone!” “The 16 year old cat IS NOT a Bad Guy.” And “We will eat when I am finished…No, I don’t know what yet.” They really aren’t too destructive. Of course, I have not been in the living room in the last 20 minutes.

The raucous sound of little super heroes is actually exciting, as well as, terrifying! Maybe I should try this more often. Well, the Fashion Fairy just came to tell me that they are rearranging the house. Let me go survey the damage before I recommend Creating with Kids About.

Wish Me Luck!

Albert Einstein had quite a high regard for the importance of the Imagination in how we see the world around us.  Einstein was a German born American physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics.  Below I have gathered a few of the many quotes credited to him regarding the imagination.  I will let his words speak for him.

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There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

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For more quotes regarding Imagination, Dreams & Creativity visit the link or go to the DreamArc home page to begin exploring your own Imagination.

I met Deb Ingino of My Wired Style.  We had an hour long conversation about our mutual interest in children and how they learn.  With My Wired Style, she focuses on the different Learning Styles of children and their parents and guardians.  She skillfully guides parents through seeking out their child’s particular style of seeing the world, as well as, their own.  This enables adults to interact and encourage each child in the way that is most effective for them.

I have just begun going through the My Wired Style E-Kit.  Already I can see why My Fashion Fairy NEEDS to pick out her own clothes and is personally offended when I tell her that velvet is not appropriate for the playground.  It also gives me a little insight into why my Dancing Dragon is so hard on himself when he doesn’t get the wings exactly symmetrical on the robot dragon.  By the way, he was also disturbed, not complemented, when I put his Robot Dragon on the website, because the second rear leg was not yet attached.  

<Sigh>

At least I can see that it is not ONLY a clash of the wills, but perhaps our different forms of communicating that cause us to stumble at times

I finally took the plunge and started a Twitter account….well…two accounts.  DreamArc was taken as a name.  So, I am registered under JuliaAshley, but still believe that having DreamArc in the name would help you find me.  Then….I started a second account under JuliaDreamArc.  I will most likely delete one of them, after I decide the best course of action.  

If you have any experience with Twitter, please, feel free to share your experience and advice!

On the DreamArc website, I just added a mini-blog and RSS feed to help keep you up-to-date on the latest images and information on the site.

The mini-blog page on the DreamArc website provides a list of current additions and changes to the site; including Kids Art, Free Coloring Pages, Free Printables, Imagination Quotes and Information on Bridging Your Imagination with Your Future.  By subscribing to the RSS feed, you will be notified as these additions and changes are made.

This Blog will remain the place to get glimpses into the behind the scenes creation of DreamArc and my musings.  The comments section here is also the easiest way for you to share your thoughts and creations with me.

Tomorrow, I will post the next Coloring Page on the site, a WASP from a photo I took while on a fieldtrip with my son and his class (photo below).  We will see if it updates on the mini-blog and pings out to all the RSS subscribers.  If not, I will have to wrestle the code to get it to act right.  THEN, I want to add the RSS feed to this Blog.  I would attempt it now, but my little creatures are waiting for me to pick them up.

Cross you fingers.

DreamArc is just beginning.  Where am I headed with it?  

Let me give you a glimpse of my plans through the end of this year.

§     Additional Printable Pages to download for personal use

§     Audio Recordings of children’s poems and stories

§     Prints, Cards, T-shirts & Infant Wear with DreamArc Images

§     Coloring Books with images generated by DreamArc

§     A CD compilation of the audio works recorded for the website

§     A Children’s Book of characters introduced on DreamArc

§     Lesson Plans for developing imagination and creativity 

§     Links to sites and products that encourage your imagination

Some of these, such as additional printable pages and products, will be implemented quickly.  Others, such as the children’s book and CD, I will develop over the next few months and should be available by the end of the year.  I will dedicate a post for each, giving you more details and keeping you informed of my progress.

Thank you for sharing the future of DreamArc with me.

KEZA         

WOW!  You go Moms!

I learned about Keza this year, an organization in Rwanda, Africa.  The name, KEZA, means “beautiful” in the Kinyarwanda language.  It is an organization of single mothers who are banning together and using their creativity to make beautiful jewelry to support their families.  You can learn more at http://www.keza.com/.  How impressive to step up to the plate and take charge of your life and care for your family through your art!  I find these women amazing and wanted to share them with you.  I receive nothing but inspiration from this organization.  So, feel free to take a look and tell me what you think.

www.DreamArc.com

(Kids for Cryogenics)

Having an imaginative family leads to some creative conversations at the dinner table.  Last night, the Fashion Fairy (FF) launched into an in depth question and debate session on what Cryogenics was and why she COULD NOT do it to her mother.

My husband, the master architect and holder of all knowledge strange and cool, was the mediator for the (what I felt to be) bizarre round table discussion.  FF wanted to know what Cryogenics was.  The mediator, who just happened to work two floors above a cryogenics lab in his early intern days, explained the “freezing your head until they find a cure for your body theory.”  I sat in utter bewilderment, my normal state of being these days, forgetting to remind my son, the Dancing Dragon (DD) to stop eating the ketchup/ mustard concoction by itself and add food to the mix.  FF, however, immediately wanted to know if she could do this to my head when I die.

NO!

Why not?  You’ll be dead.  You won’t care.

NO!

But you won’t know.

After explaining the ethics of conducting experiments on your mother, even if she doesn’t know what you are up to, I remembered to insist DD apply solid food to his diet, and told FF to stop talking and start eating, like any good parent of a future Mad Scientist would do. 

Right?

Or is this just my creative crew?  I understand that most folk may not find Cryogenics Conversation good for the digestive system, but I am growing accustom to it.  Although, I will be sleeping with one eye open until this fascination passes.

Only Off By 2 Years and 3 Inches!

Last time I was 100 feet tall and had green eyes; who knew?!  I enjoyed being a larger than life! 

How do your little critters see you?

www.DreamArc.com