During our time at the school, I had the chance to observe children from all age groups they had, from 3 year olds to kindergartners. I sat down and saw then playing with LEGOS, painting, reading with their teachers, etc. While all their activities were pretty wholesome and incredibly cute, there was one particular moment which caught my eye.

As I sat in their ‘makerspace’ (the room with tools, wood, objects to disassemble…), a group of children were playing with LEGO bricks. However, there was this one child who did not seem very interested in the LEGOS and was instead strolling around the room. In that room, there was a wall with velcro and different sized hollow cylinders that were also covered in velcro in order to stick to the wall. That boy was analyzing the cylinders and gluing them to the wall, until he decided to do something I was not expecting. He got two of those cylinders and put his wrists through them, as if they were bracelets. As I watched with no idea of what was to follow, that boy proudly stuck both his wrists to the wall. After he staring at his accomplishment for a couple seconds, he pulled one of his hands and tried to stick it higher than it was before, in an attempt to climb the wall. Unfortunately for him, it did not work out very well. Velcros aren’t great at supporting children, but he didn’t fall or anything.

Although this was a very short moment, it was very meaningful for that child. Also, I could sort of witness the three behaviors we had discussed before: autonomy, initiative, and industry. First, that child was not interested in simply playing with his peers, he wanted to do something by himself, which shows autonomy. Second, after he found the object with which he wanted to play, he devised his own way of playing with it as he tried to climb the wall, which shows initiative. Lastly, even though he was fairly discrete about his new idea on how to play with the toy, at the very least I got to see his accomplishment, which could be a rudimentary showcase of industry. Overall, it was a very cute experience to me, as I got to see that boy create his own way of playing with what I though was a straightforward toy. I hope that I can come up with a project which has a very clear purpose to me at first, and then watch as children distort what I did to create a wonderful surprise.