Needless to say, I was flabbergasted at how quickly the three boys took to this station, investigating the materials and seeing how they could be attached together to design a bi-plane. After all three students were able to use a clothespin as the body of the plane and a popsicle stick as the front wings, two of the boys felt they had accomplished their goal and engaged in dramatic play with their newly created bi-plane. That is, until the other student continued to study the image and went on to add a paperclip for the horizontal stabilizer. After that, he broke a popsicle stick into half and used one half of it for the vertical rudder. Of course, his classmates who were originally content with their planes began looking at his and thinking, "I want to add that to mine too!", which meant they went back to designing as well. The other student was still so engrossed with his bi-plane, that he added broken bamboo skewers as struts and as a way to attach buttons to the plane for the wheels. Lastly, he glued another button as the rear wheel directly to the body of the plane and finished his design off with a pipe cleaner propeller.
I was absolutely impressed at how this 5 year old student had shown character and critical thinking skills to create his very own bi-plane model with only certain materials available based on a simple diagram. I will never underestimate our youngest learners at school again!
