Floam Forest

It's not every day that the kids start representing different places we go to around the neighborhood so when L said he was making the forest out of floam we were all intrigued! 

L started sticking the small wood pieces into the floam. He was carefully placing each piece and naming each part. 

"This is the log I climb on and over here is the other tree by it. We need all the people too!"

L worked quickly as he put each wooden piece into place. He scanned the floam forest floor and decided there wasn't enough. 

"I think we need the people." 

He picked up a wood chunk and declared it to be J. 

"This is J! And here's me and oh you too Ms. Jill!"

But after a few blocks in, L realized he couldn't tell the difference between each person. 

"I don't remember who that is. I think that was J." 

Hmm... what to do? How were we going to tell the difference between all of the people AND the wood pieces?

"I think I need to do something different. They need something."

L picked up some corks and then sorted through some other random colorful shapes near by. He started putting the shapes on top of the corks to represent different people. There was one problem though... everyone had yellow hexagons as hats. 

When asked who was who L responded simply with, "Um, I don't know who they are." 

Hmm, another issue. Although this was one solution, it wasn't the right one. We kept brainstorming, but after some discussion L decided he wanted everyone's first letter on top of the corks! 

We got to work. L would tell me what letters to write as he named EVERYONE! He went through all of the kids in our class, all of the kids in Dogwood, and even all of the teachers. 

When he realized some of the teachers and kids have the same letters, L decided that we should put colors on them too! L worked through a lot of different situations while sitting at the table for about 30 minutes. All of the kids were so intrigued by his creation that by the time it was time to clean up they were sad to watch it go! 

Such a cool way to represent the forest!