In the Dragon's Lair

I was truly inspired by hearing Lella and Amelia present at the Reggio Emilia conference (The Wonders of Learning) at Henderson College.  (There will be a blog post about this experience as soon as I can collect my thoughts and wrap my brain around all of the wonderful things that were shared with us.)  The reason that I mention this conference is that the Reggio Emilia philosophy of early childhood education uses documentation as a key piece in expanding on experiences with a child and their learning.  Both the "teacher" collecting thoughts, written documentation, photographs, and work samples and the child contributing to the documentation, reflecting back on what they have learned and expanding on their knowledge of a particular topic by revisiting the topic over and over time.  I am inspired.  Not only to use this with the students and staff that I work with but also with Miles.

So here it is... A little bit of documentation about a topic that was inspired ENTIRELY by Miles' imagination.

Miles- "Oh No there's a dragon print in the snow!"  

Today there was an inch or so of snow on the ground when we left for church.  Miles asked, "Can dragon walk in the snow?"  I assured him that we would have plenty of time for him to play with Dragon after church.  (There is a little bit of a dispute between Chris and Miles as to Dragon's  name Chris thinks that since it's a 2 headed dragon one head should be named "Crouching Tiger" and the other "Hidden Dragon.")

After church Miles and Dragon beat me soundly at a snowball fight at  which time miles began making Dragon a house under the slide.  Jessie sniffed it until it fell apart, so I suggested we make it in the crook of the tree where Jessie would be less likely to accidentally knock it over.  I introduced the idea of calling it a dragon lair instead of a dragon house.

 Miles really wanted the dragon lair to have a roof, but when we tried to put the snow across the top it kept caving in on Dragon.  We came up with the idea of using sticks across the walls to then set patted down snowballs on top of to create a roof.

(Miles took the documenting photographs of this step.)  Miles decided that we didn't need to make it solid, because Dragon would need windows to look out.  After he decided the roof was finished we used dried hydrangea flowers to add some decoration and camouflage to the house.

Once we were done creating the dragon lair Miles happily played with it for about 5 minutes.  Then decided that he and dragon needed some hot cocoa and an indoor lair and we went in to set to work. 

When we got inside we made Dragon an indoor lair.  We used an old milk carton some fake flowers (giggle flowers if you were to ask Miles) and some tape to secure the flowers and leaves used for camouflage.  

Miles and daddy played that the knight was going to get Dragon because Dragon had captured the princess. The knight came and saved the princess from Dragon and returned the jewels that the dragon had taken from the village.  

 While Chris and Miles were playing they started to make up songs about what Dragon was doing.  Chris played the Banjiar and made up lyrics about what Miles was having Dragon do.  

At one point Miles made a picture of Dragon.  

To encourage his new found love of dragons we took a trip to the library and checked out some books that have dragons as the protagonist.  

It will be wonderful to see how Miles expands on this dragon play.