PBL: Build Your Own Home! Day 1

Date: 18th July, 2022; Monday.
Facilitators: Nikita, Auindrilla, Sonai, Sanmoyee, Anupriya and Abhinanda.
Participants: Arthlings of Arth Hours.
Tags: Project-based learning (PBL), pretend and play, role play, sensory exploration, understanding our surroundings, construction.

What is PBL?

Project Based Learning (PBL) is an approach to classroom education that invites children to look at a complex central problem or question, followed by exploration over an extended period of time. Investigating these projects fosters critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and also encourages students to have authentic interactions with the real world. At Arth Hours, we made our first foray into PBL with our ‘Build Your Own Home’ project!

Planting the Project Seeds

Our facilitators developed the idea for this project based on several observations.
Observation 1: Our Arthlings enjoy planning and building their own architectural models with different construction materials.
Observation 2: Construction materials are a versatile medium that can be used to explore engineering and spatial reasoning. They can also be used as a vehicle for self-expression.
Observation 3: Our Arthlings take inspiration from what they know when they create and explore. This also allows the Arthlings to explore their place in the world and how they relate to it.
Observation 4: Arthlings enjoy sharing and talking about their creations with facilitators and friends. This also helps foster communication skills.
Observation 5: Our Arthlings are motivated to explore when working towards a specific goal.

Thus our facilitators proposed an idea: inviting the Arthlings to design and build their very own homes! Arthlings could then populate their homes with inhabitants. This would be followed by a housewarming party, to which they could invite anyone they chose.
An introduction to the project pathway was conceptualized with the following questions:

What would you like to use to build your home?

How would you like to build it?

How would you like to decorate your home?

Who do you think would live in this home?

Planning and setup

The plan was divided into 3 steps: building a home, decorating, and deciding on the inhabitants of the home.

Building: Building materials like Lego, Magna-Tiles, wooden blocks, and playdough were made available. Trays were provided for the children to collect their materials of choice.
Decorating: Sticks, leaves, flowers, stickers, tempera paint and coloured playdough were provided for the children to decorate their houses. Paper bags were provided to the children to carry these materials.
Choosing the Inhabitants: Name tags made of brown card were stuck on popsicle sticks for the children to use. Stationery was made available for the children to write the names of the people they would choose to live in the house.

How it happened

After opening with a lion dance, Nikita Didi introduced the curious Arthlings to the grand plan of the day! The children picked up their trays and rushed to collect building materials! Some materials were in high demand; Arya declared that she would need many square Magna-Tiles. However, after some negotiations, a compromise was reached! Each Arthling then chose a building site and marked the territory with their tray. After some minor allegations of property encroachment were resolved, building making began with great gusto!
Building: Each Arthling had a unique architectural vision, which they enacted using building materials. Shivansh made a tall boundary wall with Magna-Tiles. He said this was to keep out thieves! Shanaya chose to make two homes. She constructed two very tall and narrow towers, side by side using wooden blocks. Vaanya, with focus and great determination, attempted to make a long and thin noodle of playdough that she used to encircle her home. She dealt with repeated setbacks involving playdough breakage, but persevered!

Shanaya’s motto: One for me, and one for you!

Is the fence high enough to keep the thieves away?!

Decorating: Nikita Didi then called upon the Arthlings to collect materials for decoration. The children quickly scooped up leaves, branches, flowers, stickers, whole bottles of tempera paint , and playdough to put in their paper bags. Hazzel diligently divided her playdough into little cakes, which she put on each of the studs on top of her Lego castle. Arya found inspiration in Hazzel’s work, and stated that she wanted to decorate her home just like Hazzel had! Both Arya and Hazzel used playdough as an adhesive to stick leaves and branches on their creations. When Arya fell short of stickers to put on her house, Hazzel gifted her a page of stickers with a smile. Ayansh decided that his creativity should not be confined to the building materials alone! He broke boundaries by choosing to paint his paper bag instead.
Dhriya chose to decorate her house with orange and pink tempera. This bold combination of colours served as inspiration for many, and orange tempera was in high demand. Vaanya, Ayansh, Dhriya, Arya and Hazzel passed green, blue, pink and orange tempera colours back and forth via Sanmoyee Didi, who facilitated the peaceful exchange. Meanwhile, Viaan explored the versatility of playdough while making his house. He customized his playdough by twisting green, blue and yellow playdough together. He finally created a multicolour, nature-inspired playdough house with Auindrilla Didi.

Choosing the inhabitants: All the Arthlings were generous when deciding who they would allow to live in their houses. Vaanya named her mother, father, uncle, aunt, and all the other family members she could think of. Shanaya chose one of her two towers for herself, and kept the other for her grandmother. Each Arthling was invited to write the names of the inhabitants on popsicle name tags, and place them in their house to populate it. When they were done, our Arthlings’ finished homes were photographed by Samir Bhaiya in all their glory!

Clean-up: After a hard day of building, the Arthlings found that their classroom was in a bit of a mess… This was when Ankur Bhaiya set the Arthlings the challenge of cleaning up the classroom! Our team of busy little Arthlings got to to work with buckets, soapy water, and sponges. They were pleased to discover that cleaning a mess can be just as fun as making one.

Outcome and future directions

This project allowed Arthlings to give a physical form to their imaginations. It encouraged them to ask and answer a fundamental question: What makes a home?
Our Arthlings used their critical thinking to follow through on their ideas and create a finished product. Building their own homes granted them the feeling of ownership; the ability to carry out a plan from start to finish provided them with a sense of independence and confidence in their own abilities. As this project continues, Arthlings will have the opportunity to explore the concept of a home in multiple ways.
Stay tuned for Part 2!

AHE1, PBL, ConstructionSanmoyee BasakJuly 19, 2022Pretend and play, role play, sensory exploration, understanding our surroundings, construction, PBL