Experiencing and Experimenting with Charcoal
October 30/31
In preschool room 2 our explorations with charcoal yielded exciting possibilities. Our interaction with charcoal today represented an experimental and experiential step into the unknown for children and educators alike. Our room embraced the mystery of this new experience. The mystery had been building and unfolding since its announcement to the children of preschool room 2 on Monday. Then on Tuesday morning the children arrived to a room radically transformed from the one they knew on Monday. Many of the room’s familiar items (shelves, tables, carpets, building blocks, etc.) had been relocated and replaced with large rolls of white paper taped to the floor. The children were very curious about this sudden transformation and what it revealed about the surprise announced the previous day. Many of the children then began to play on the surface of the paper. Due to our technical difficulties with the projector, we decided to move the class outside until we could determine a solution. Having decided to postpone the charcoal activity until the next day, we rolled up the paper to reuse in Wednesday’s class. The children returned to a room now without any trace of the paper that had been there earlier in the morning. The mystery surrounding the surprise had now been compounded dramatically for them.
The children’s patience was rewarded on Wednesday when they arrived to the same classroom setup as the previous morning. When we finally introduced charcoal, a pervasive sense of wonder emerged from the group. What seemed to impress the children most once they held a charcoal stick for themselves was the uncontainable dimension of the material itself. It was unlike any drawing tool they had ever used, because the very process of drawing would necessarily leave its mark on one’s hand (and everything else within contact). This tangible dimension of the charcoal seemed to make the greatest impression on most of the children.
After the children settled down to mark on the paper, it was charcoal’s essential volatility that for many became a source of amazement as it quickly became clear that it was impossible to mark the paper without marking one’s self. Most of the children seemed to embrace this volatility, integrating their smudged hands into the process. Before long, many happily applied the smudging to their faces. Some of the children continued to engage quite intensively with the charcoal material. Numerous markings of quite elaborate, though improvised, design decorated the many rolls of paper so that, in combination, the rolls reflected an extensive and diverse canvas of expressive engagement with new materials and processes.
Some children engaged longer and more intensively with materials than others. Many children moved on to other sources of interest (like the projector and the projected images) after briefer engagements with the process of charcoal marking. After the class was divided, however, most of the remaining children re-engaged intensively with the charcoal, indicating perhaps that the creative potential of our charcoal interactions will increase as the children become more familiar and comfortable with the materials and processes.
