Our Guest Blogger: Joan
The Wonder Studio is multi-sensory, “messy,” and open-ended
experience for children age 18 months and up.
At six and nine, my kids represent the “and up” end of the spectrum, and
sometimes people seem surprised that I still take my kids there. So why do we still go? Well, quite honestly the creativity,
imagination, learning and play inspired by the Wonder Studio is just as
important for older kids as it is for their younger peers. I like to think
that it is good for the little ones to have an older kid to play with sometimes
and I know it is good for my older kids to learn patience and kindness when
dealing with little kids.
Recently we
went to the Summer Studio on a Monday and Tuesday since I had the week off from
work. And I got to watch my children
display their confidence, experiment with budding interests, practice mentoring
and sharing, marvel at the beauty of art, and wrestle, with larger issues like
finding inspiration and considering life and death. These are all things that help them to grow
and develop into better human beings and that make my Mommy heart glad.
As they raced eagerly inside that first day it was good to
see them feel so comfortable and in love with this place that they had been
coming to since they were tiny tots.
They both headed straight for the spin art and started churning out
works of art. “I’m really good at this,”
G. declared confidently as she began her creative work. “I’m using blueberry sauce, ketchup and
mustard,” announced J., showing hints of his recent interest in watching
the Master Chef Jr. series on-line and working toward becoming a chef. After warming up together they dispersed and
wandered away from each other, searching for some creative inspiration.
G. dove right into the mint green flubber with gold glitter. She made wonderful
“mini cakes” in a muffin tin and decorated them with gems and dinosaurs. Then she began to offer them to various
adults before telling me that she wanted me
to walk around and share them with people.
Although I love the Wonder Studio I will admit that I would have felt
pretty stupid walking around by myself asking adults to eat my flubber cakes. G. kept insisting and so I
admitted I was feeling a bit shy. “Well
that’s okay,” she counseled. “Why don’t
you start with the teacher and then go to some of your friends? That will make it easier.” She piloted me over to Miss Shannon first and
then started pointing out different moms that she had noticed me talking
to. It should have come as no surprise
that my incredibly social daughter would have some good advice for curing
shyness.
Meanwhile J. decided to paint something at an available
easel. First he had to ask Miss Shannon
for a new sheet of paper and then he sat there staring at all that blank
whiteness. “It’s hard getting started,”
observed Miss Shannon. “My art teacher
says that you should start with a dot and then go from there.” So J. picked up a paint brush and slapped
a dot into the center of the paper and then sat there staring at it waiting for
inspiration to strike. I wrestled with
my impulse to rescue him and fix this problem.
I wanted inspiration to not just strike, but to impel him to create
something amazing. It never struck and
in a few seconds J. was drawn outside to the circular pipes loaded onto a
central pipe with a crank. No need to
wait for inspiration here.
It took only a few seconds for him to figure out how to
scoop up the purple tinted water in the lower bucket and get it to come out the
top and splash into the second bucket.
He churned away for quite some time using his engineer brain and then
was standing near it while a younger explorer struggled to make something
happen at that station. “You have to do
it the other way if you want the water to come out,” J. finally told
him. The boy started going in the other
direction, but the water was still not coming out the top. “You have to do it faster,” suggested
J.. The boy started cranking faster
and as the purple water surged out the top they both grinned in satisfaction as
they watched the wonders of centrifugal force in action.
By now G. had joined us outside and she was playing with
a long clear tubes and plastic fish in a water table full of bubbles. She had been there for quite some time when
two little boys started having a problem.
One of them wanted the other one’s tube and was upset that he couldn’t
have it. “What do you want?” asked G. getting in on the conversation with the smaller children. “Would you like this?” she asked, holding out
her tube. The boy nodded, suddenly happy
as G. handed it to him and wandered on to the next activity.
Next it was time for
face painting and both of my kids sat down together and got started. Ultimately they each bailed on this project
half way through—declaring it too itchy.
J. then spent a bunch of times with the shrimp—naming some of them. Pincher, Snapper, Mr. Grandpa Fish, Squirt
and Steve all became friends of ours.
All too soon it was time to clean up together and then read
a fantastic story about a watermelon loving alligator. They loved it and as the rest of the class
continued on into the singing part that J. never cares for he snuck over to
the counter and borrowed the book and started re-reading it out loud for
G. This caused a little boy who was
sitting next to him to exclaim, “You can READ?!
It was nice to see J. experience a rare moment of confidence in his
reading ability. As school he is at best
a very mediocre reader compared to his school mates, but here he was a rock
star.
Day two of the Wonder Studio is usually a repeat of the
first day, but although most of the activities were the same, the experience
never is. “I hope she brought her
crabs,” J. declared on the way in and to my surprise the previous day’s
shrimp had been replaced with fish and crabs!
J. rushed right over and began to inspect his new friends. There were two tubs filled with water, some
nets, some little metal tubs and an aerator making a lot of bubbles. This station certainly attracted a lot of
attention that day and there were a lot of discussions about life and death
over in that corner. Since we have fish
as home, both of my kids are very aware that fish cannot breathe out of water,
so they were quick to tell the younger kids to make sure they got the fish back
into the water ASAP. In fact, J.decided that the kindest way to transport the fish from one bucket to the next
was to scoop them into the tin bucket so they stayed in water throughout their
journey and didn’t risk getting tangled in the net and hurting themselves. One of the little kids had put a fish in the
second bucket all alone and J. quickly transported another fish to join
him. “There. Now he will have a little friend to play with
for a little while, if he survives.” The
kids also all seemed very scared of the crabs.
They saw those claws and knew they would use them. At one point J. observed that the fish
were all staying near the crabs to avoid being scooped up. “I think they know we are afraid of the
crabs,” he said.
It was another amazing day of play featuring G. baking a
delicious cake in the sand kitchen and J. creating such a mesmerizing swirl
of color on the corn starch sprinkled car ramp that he just stood and stared
and murmured, “Isn’t it pretty?” to me when I came to look. Then we concluded with an amazing story about
a child and her cardboard box and all of the things she created with it. My kids loved this because at the moment at
home we have one cardboard box that is a two person car (complete with old
license place on the back) and another box that they crawl inside when they
want to pretend to be a package that is delivered in the mail. Then when we got in the car J. surprised
me with a new question.
J.: Mom, did you
read the directions for grownups?
Me: Yes, they send
them to us in an e-mail every time.
Why? Are they good directions?
J.: Yes. Like you should never have a plan and you
should turn off your cell phone.
This made we pause. I
am the kind of person who almost always has a plan outside of Wonder Studio and
who always has my cell phone on. Maybe I
should try to follow these directions from time to time in my non-Wonder Studio
world. Maybe that would help make the
magic last for longer.
