Fountainhead School, Surat: Grade 3- Creating an ideal community

What fun the third graders are up to! You should see them in working mode! Full of zest and energy, putting their creative instincts to the best use। We are onto our third unit of inquiry –How we organize ourselves---Communities----and as a part of enabling enduring understanding we were supposed to design community.

With the help of architect— Snehal Shah and his team of students—Kinjal, Vairagi, Shabbir, Nakul and Ankur----we successfully completed our mission.

It was a 3 day activity—Day one—We went on a city tour to observe the places of work, play, live and places that serve us. And also the general movement pattern in the

city. The kids were divided into 4 groups each with a team leader from the architect’s team. They interacted with the kids and help them identify the different places and they even managed to answer the kids non stop volley of questions. It was a day well spent.

Day two—The kids eagerly waited for their team leaders to arrive and kept everything ready for them (arranged themselves according to groups, moved the tables &
benches, kept the art supplies ready).As soon as the team leaders arrived the kids started making templates of various places that they had seen like the temple, hospital, bank, municipal building, parks, super markets, bungalows, high rises, etc. By the end of the day each team had quite a collection of templates.

Day three—Once again the kids were anxious to know what was in store for them and what a

welcome the team leaders got with shouts of hurrah and joy! Now each team was given a blank landscape—a cardboard with one thing drawn on it---a river, a lake, a road and a railway line –

and they had to plan their city around it .What a time they had selecting the best templates from the ones which they had made. Every now and then the leaders kept on reminding them to choose wisely, to pick a template from each category- a place to live, work, play and places that serve us. Kids

sometimes selected their own drawings or rather colorful drawings and left out some important

but less attractive ones.
They pasted them around on the cardboard and made roads and greenery around it. Now their ideal city was ready and they were ready to present it.

The kids explained their choices for planning their city in a particular manner and even accepted their mistakes when they were asked about some missing things like a railway station in their city in the oral presentation.

Overall it was quite an enriching experience for the third graders who became little architects for a few days and got first hand experience of hanging out and working with real architects.