What's in a Frame?

January 23, 2023

A provocation with colored jewels, jenga blocks and pictures frames were presented as a thought provoking invitation. I wondered how the children might transform these materials into a creative work of art. I observed and listened as some friends came over and began to manipulate the materials. I noticed this friend placing the small blocks into different angles and extending the length of the blocks from one corner of the picture frame to the other end. CC said "I'm making a bridge for the cars and you drive them on top of here."

As the friends continued their work I saw that RN was really focused on placing the jewels in a specific order around the edge of the frame. One by one, she strategically placed the jewels using all the colors around the frame. Then she said: "you know what? This is kind of like my Mom's jewels but she doesn't have them like these colors, just rainbows.

She then used the small blocks to make another frame inside the larger frame carefully placing the blue jewels on top of each block.

NP looks over at RN's work and says to her "R, I like your work because it looks like a giant window with a window inside!"

She pauses to take a look at her work, picks up another blue jewel and placed it on a block. Before long she begins adding yellow jewels between the blue creating a pattern.

"There's no more yellow she says. She picks up a handful of jewels and says "I'm going to use these colors. They're light foggy darkish purple."

She picks up two of the jewels and notices the difference in their colors and says "this one is the lightest and this one is the darkest." As she continued her work, I asked "what's in your frame?" She left the table, came back with her family photo and said "this is what's in a frame! A picture!" With that said, she created a beautiful picture within a frame. When she had finished, she said "I'm done, so anyone can come work with it now.