Fieldnotes 4/20

Today, the students were playing with legos, blocks, and some kids were playing bowling. A couple of them were playing house and a couple were building pinatas out of paper and tape. At first I sat with the kids who were building cars out of legos. They built police cars and made a jail out of the blocks. They kept asking the other students to be in the jail for them but didn't get many responses back. The few girls in the art room were coloring and putting together pinatas and they were coping each other again. The teacher told them they should have their own ideas but as I was listening to their conversations, they were following the same pattern. One of the girls was saying how the rainbow didn't include the color pink, and all the other girls disagreed with her and said it did. That girl then decided to agree to them as well, saying that the rainbow did have pink. I found this disturbing because the girl presented her information with such conviction, and then was brought down by her friends, even when she knew she was right. Another thing that happened was that the girl who was throwing a tantrum the last few times I had gone threw another tantrum. She laid on the floor and cried for about five minutes before the teacher took her out into the hall. After she came back from the hallway, she was a lot calmer. The teachers kept an eye on her but she was fine for the rest of the time that I was there. The kids then did a science project where they tried to make plastic with warm milk and vinegar. They had a good time with it, and afterward tried to make shapes out of their pieces of plastic. There was not a lot going on today, the kids were playing mostly quietly and coloring or building pinatas. I didn't have much to do and at time I felt that there were too many adults in the class.