On Imagination

The imagination of a child is a beautiful thing. So often, as we grow up, we forget the countless hours spent with dolls, trains, and building sets, and narrow our focus on to what is real and tangible. We forget the endless possibilities a cup, paper towel roll, or sheet can provide, and we instead only see things as tools to be used in set ways. We lose our sense of wonder, we stop asking “Why? But, Why? But, Why?!”, and we instead take things at face value, not bothering to verify what we are being told. Once, when I was eight, I turned a brown paper bag into a play home using bamboo skewers to hold the bag’s shape, and the fallen seeds of a Sweetgum tree as lights. Today, if you gave me the same materials, I would laugh, and tell you I’m too busy to be Last week during session, I was in charge of dramatic play, and decided to bring down magnifying glasses for the students to use. As students rushed from circle time to centers, I asked who wanted to play detective. “I do, I do!” Shouted their little voices, as I handed them each a magnifying glass and small handheld mirror to be used as their detective supplies.

“Ok,” I said, “We’re detectives. Detectives solve mysteries. What are we going to solve?”

“We’re going to find the treasure with the map!”, Abby* decided.

“Great!” I said, as I began to scan the area for something we could use as a map. But before I could find a piece of paper that could work as a map, Abby held her hands up in front of my face.

“Here’s the map! We have to go all the way around the big pond and then to the monster’s cave. Then the beach and we’ll find the treasure.”

“Ok,” I replied, “You lead the way!”

            We walked around the pond (the table), to the monster’s cave (a large cardboard box filled with Styrofoam bowls), and to the beach (the carpet at the front of the classroom), where we began digging for the treasure. Again, I began looking around for something to be our buried treasure. Markers wouldn’t work, and neither would a book, and I couldn’t give her my bracelets, for fear of them getting lost. And again, Abby stuck her hand, this time clenched tightly into a fist, in front of me to show me the “buried treasure princess necklace” she had just found.

            It’s in moments like these that I learn the most from my students, as they remind of the power and joy of imagination. Just because we have ‘grown up’ in no way means we aren’t allowed to step out of our black and white lives, and into the colorful imaginations of our students, who show us the colorful world inside of ourselves.

~Becca Goldstein

Corps member

Team Joy