Parker joins clay exploring with his friends. Ezra and Gio teach him how to cut clay with a string. He holds the edges of the string with both hands and hooks the chunk of clay with the string and pulls it towards him. He notices that clay is wiggling, and it is hard to cut the clay.
Lara: “You can push it like this.”
She suggests to Parker that he can also push the string into the clay to cut it.
Parker: “I did it!” he smiles.
Parker: “What is that?”
He looks at Gio’s bridge.
Minami: “Gio made a bridge. What do you think about it?”
Parker: “I like it. Can I make one?”
Minami: “Of course! Do you want to borrow Gio’s planning picture?”
Parker: “Ummm…but I don’t know how to make Gio’s bridge.”
Minami: “Would you like to draw your plan in the paper?”
Parker: “Yeah! But I don’t know how to draw a bridge.”
Minami brings a book that has three different types of bridges and suggests that he observe them and draw one of them together.
Parker: “How can I draw this?”
Minami: “Isn’t it shaped like a rainbow?”
Parker and Minami draw the first layer of the rainbow arc, and Parker adds the second layer on the top of the first one.
Minami: “What else do you see in the picture?
Parker: “Lines?”
Minami: “Good observation! So, let’s add them!”
Parker adds lots of lines between the rainbow shapes.
When he goes back to the floor, he cuts the clay, rolls it, and makes a long shape like a snake.
Parker: “Look at this. Looks like poop!!”
He giggles and keeps rolling to make it longer.
Parker: “What I’m gonna do now?”
Minami: “Look at your planning picture. Do you remember what shape we drew to make the bridge?”
Parker: “Ummm… Rainbow?”
Minami: “How do you make the rainbow shape?”
He bends the long piece of clay and places it on the floor.
Parker: “I wanna put more clay.”
He takes small pieces of clay and starts to stick them on the bridge.
When he pushes these small pieces of clay on the middle of the bridge, the bridge sinks and becomes a half rectangle-like shape.
“Haha! That’s a funny shape!!” says Parker and continues adding the small pieces.
Parker looks at Gio’s bridge and notices that there are pebbles and sticks on it.
“I want to put sticks here” and he adds some sticks on the bridge.
Next, he starts to add some pebbles on the legs of the bridge.
Every time he pushes a new pebble on the bridge, the clay pushes back the stuck ones and some of them come off.
“Why do these keep coming off? I can’t put this one here.” he says and shows it to Minami.
“Oh! There is a problem!” says Minami, excitedly. And she continues, “Hmmm… I wonder how Gio added a lot of rock on his bridge.”
Parker looks at Gio’s bridge from different angles.
Lara makes something else besides Parker. She hears Parker and Minami are facing the problem.
Lara: “Parker, you need to hold here. When you put rocks on, hold this part, okay?”
She points at the leg of the bridge and tells him to hold there instead of the middle of the bridge.
When Parker pushes some pebbles, the stacked pebbles stay. He keeps adding more pebbles and names his bridge a “Wood poop bridge”.
Parker: “I wanna make another one. I wanna make a rock bridge !!”
After making the first one successfully, he says that very excitedly.
Minami: “Let’s draw your plan first?”
He runs to the art table and ask Minami,
“How can I draw a rock bridge?”
Minami opens a page of a rock bridge and shows it to Parker.
Minami: “What shape do you see?”
“Rainbow!” says Parker and draws two rainbow arcs.
Minami: “Do you see something else on the bridge?”
Parker observes the picture very carefully and exclaims, “Rocks!”
And he continues, “But they are very funny shapes.”
He giggles and adds lots of round shapes between the rainbow arcs.
He grabs his planning picture and runs back to the clay area. He cut a small piece of clay. He sits, puts one hand on the clay and starts to roll it.
Parker: “Ummm….this is too small."
He cuts another piece and makes sure the clay is big enough. The clay piece is quite big and heavy, and Parker finds out rolling it in the same strategy is not working. He still uses one hand, but this time, he puts all of his weight onto the clay and rolls it
When he makes a rainbow arc and places it on the floor, the clay wiggles. It looks very unstable and when he tries to fix the shape, it falls on the floor.
“This is not standing,” says Parker and keeps trying to push the clay onto the floor.
But the clay keeps falling, and Parker and Minami look at each other silently.
Minami: “How can we make it stable?”
Parker: “I don’t know.”
Minami: “Do you remember we thought about stability when we made a lot of bird nests? Can you think of some strategies we tried?”
Parker: “Ummm… I don’t remember.”
Suddenly, Lara gets a small piece of clay and starts to add onto the leg of the bridge. “Parker, I know. You just put a piece of clay right here,” says Lara, and demonstrates it to Parker.
Parker uses a small piece of clay and starts to add it around the leg of the bridge. The clay is a bit dried out and gets slightly firmer, so he needs to use his fingers to push the clay very hard. When he pushes the clay onto the leg of the bridge, he also slides his finger towards the floor. He makes smooth surfaces, and the sliding parts perfectly stick on the floor, and it makes a stable bridge.
Minami carefully shakes the bridge, but it doesn’t wiggle or fall.
Minami: “Ohhh! It looks really stable now!”
Parker smiles very proudly.
Parker: “Now I wanna put a lot of rocks. But I want white ones. These white ones are beautiful.”
Minami: “Where should we get these beautiful white rocks?”
Parker: “I know where I can get them. Come with me!”
He runs to the basket full of pebbles and starts to pick ones that he likes.
Parker: “I like this one. I like this one too. Look at this one!! It’s so beautiful!!”
He shows some beautiful pebbles to Minami. He seems very excited to add the pebbles onto his bridge, so even this small moment (choosing nice pebbles) brightens his process of making a bridge.
When he goes back to his bridge, he remembers Lara’s strategy to add pebbles, and he successfully adds lots and lots of beautiful rocks that he carefully selected.
This time, He decides to add some sea glass onto the bridge. He carefully holds the bottom of middle part of the bridge and sticks big pieces of sea glass. Again, some pieces of sea glass come off when he tries to stick one beside the stuck ones.
Parker: “Oh no, they keep coming off.”
Arjin comes and offers some help. Before Arjin sticks sea glass on, he looks at it, finds the sharpest edge, turns the sea glass around, then pushes the sharpest edge into the clay. Each time Arjin shows it to Parker, Parker copies Arjin. Also, Arjin takes a small piece of clay and covers the contact point with clay and sea glass. The stuck sea glass becomes stable on the bridge.
Parker sticks more sea glass on the side of the bridge and says, “I like them here too."
Parker makes the rock bridge by borrowing ideas from his friends.
Also, the rock bridge has more details and personality in it, so he looks satisfied and proud of himself and the process of the rock bridge.