transformers and math in a commercial-free preschool

Commercially licensed characters. Are. Everywhere. Kids these days are inundated with them from birth. Even adults these days grew up inundated by them, so much that it's hard not to think of some of our favorites as "classics" and make them an exception to the rule. 

What's the rule? Around here, it's "No commercially licensed characters at school." We like our school to be a haven where the bombardment of images from TV and movies stops for a few hours and children are free (or forced) to use their imaginations (and memory) to guide their dramatic play. That means T-shirts, lunch boxes, books, classroom materials, backpacks, costumes, shoes, hats, blankets - everything - must be free of commercially licensed characters.

The kids don't forget about their favorites when they walk through the door, of course. There is still plenty of talk and pretend play from Star Wars to Disney princesses and everything in between. The difference is that the "stuff" isn't there to define the game for the children. They have to rely on their mental recall and language skills to reenact favorite stories. If they want light sabers or crowns, they figure out how to make them from the materials available in the art room, using their creativity and problem solving in the process.

This week I got a glimpse of another great outcome of having the commercial character ban in place. Some of the kids have become interested in Transformers, and spent much of their time outdoors playing Autobots and Decepticons, explaining the characters and game to their friends along the way.  Indoors, they invented a new use for the ever-popular Magna-Tiles: they built a variety of 3-D shapes, named them after their favorite Transformer characters, and then had them transform into flat shapes.

"Watch how it transforms," they told me. "You put the arms up, then the head..." and demonstrated until the flat shape had returned to its original 3-D glory. This reminded me of 4th-6th grade math lessons in which children learn to visualize 3-D shapes from a flat drawing that can be folded up into a shape. These kids will be champs at that, and they don't even know they're learning it. And they might not have had the chance to learn it if store-bought Transformers had been allowed at school. 

For more on the commercial-free movement, go here:
Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood

useful

when you are 4
anything is possible
everything is beautiful
disappointments are the worst thing ever
a knocked-over block castle is a disaster
a little blood on your finger makes you wonder
if you are going to die.

when you are 4
everything is original
naptime is unthinkable
under the table is your hiding place
and time is a snail

when you are 4
your stories get longer
your fingers get stronger
you laugh with abandon
when someone says "underwear"

when you are 4
a stick is a sword
     a violin
     a magic wand
     a mixing spoon
     a hairbrush
     a conductor's baton

when you are 4
everything is for climbing on
everything is for painting on
everything is for gluing on
everything is for banging on
everything is useful
if you use your imagination

when you are 4

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One of the teachers got a new mixer for her birthday and brought the box and styrofoam packaging to school for the kids to use.

N. was leaving school with her mom just as I was returning from a parent-teacher conference.  She walked toward the front door with a big smile on her face and a large... something... in her hands, and announced, "Useful."

I looked at it more closely.  She had transformed the mixer's styrofoam packaging into a caddy of sorts, inserting things into its various nooks, crannies, and holes; mostly her artwork made of paper, but also wilted flowers (a.k.a. bells), a hair band, and an extra chunk of styrofoam that she'd colored on with pastels.

Then she noticed that her useful thing still had some vacant space.  There was a round hole on one side, about two inches in diameter.  She looked around and thought about it for mere seconds before she had the solution: on the table next to the fish tank was a small paper cup containing water and some half-wilted flowers that we'd been using in the art room.  She had relocated the flowers to this paper vase herself a day or two earlier, rescuing them from a certain glue-related fate, and decided at this moment that they were going home with her.  She gently and easily fitted the cup into the circular hole in the styrofoam, and giggled with glee.

"Useful," I said, to acknowledge her delight in her creation.

"Useful," she agreed, and off she went with her mom, easily carrying all of her useful things.