Building A Ladder (Part Two)

This post is a continuation of yesterday's post in which I described how the ladder project came into being. When last we saw our building team, we had run out of time leaving a partially assembled ladder resting on the ground where the kids could see it and hopefully be inspired to continue their work.

For the next couple days, however, the kids went about their business, not mentioning or even seeming to notice the ladder that had consumed them only a few hours earlier. I'd hoped that the sight of the two parallel uprights and it's dozen or so unsecured rungs lying there in plain sight would motivate someone to pick up a hammer and get to work. I knew that if one kid, just one kid, took the lead, others would follow. Up to now that person had been Charlotte, but she had other things on her mind.

Of course, there is no shame in half finished projects around the preschool, I stumble across the evidence of them every day: arrangements of sticks left in a corner, collections of "jewels" under sand in a bucket, pipe cleaners hung in a cluster from a lilac branch, ropes tied here or there -- things that held meaning for one or more children for a time. But time always passes and the people move on. I didn't want the ladder to be one of those, but it's not always up to me.

A weekend went by. When we got back to school this week, I figured I'd give the ladder project one more chance, so moved it from the ground, clamping the uprights to the work bench, arranging the mismatched selection of wood that the kids had collected to use as rungs. As I did so, I realized that many of them were pretty hard wood, or were pretty thick, characteristics that make it extra challenging for preschoolers when driving nails with 7 oz. hammers -- heck, those light weight hammers are challenging for adults even in the best of circumstances. I dug up some softer, thinner pieces of wood to replace the harder, thicker wood. Perhaps I shouldn't have done it, but hammering nails is for many kids enough of a struggle and I've seen too many kids give up when their nail doesn't budge despite dozens of direct hits. I also made sure our 1-lb. hammer was available.

This strategy worked to get kids interested again in the ladder project, although it was mostly the younger children, those who had not been involved in its genesis, who took up the challenge for most of the morning. I tried to not hover in that area, instead leaving that to the parent-teacher working the station for the day. 

At one point I found Charlotte, last week's diving force, on the swing. I couldn't help myself, "Those kids are down there working on the ladder."

"When they're finished we can start building the tree house." She looked up into the cedars where she envisions it. "It was my idea, you know."

"I know." That's when it struck me that she was doing exactly what I was doing: keeping the big picture in mind, holding the vision, but stepping back to create space for others to do the work. Most of the children were just focused on the challenge of the hammer and nail. A few could see the ladder we were making together, a group in which I include myself. Charlotte alone was keeping the tree house alive.

After about 30 minutes of steady hammering the rungs were more or less secure, although there were a lot of nails still sticking out. The children were simply not strong enough to finish driving them into the underlying 2X4's, so I took it upon myself to showily finish them off, making a lot of noise so that more kids would stop what they were doing to come see what we were up to. Once I had a decent sized group around the work bench I said, "I think we might be finished with our ladder. Now we need to test it to make sure it's safe."

I began tugging on a few of the rungs, saying, "That'll hold," while several of the kids joined in. After a few minutes, I asked, "Does that seem strong enough?" There was a general consensus that it was. "I guess now we need to try climbing it." Despite Charlotte's tree house idea, I'd formed my own idea that we could really use a ladder of exactly this length up the face of our "concrete slide," so proposed that this, at least, ought to be where we test it. 

Charlotte was the only one who objected and she did so forcefully, "No, Teacher Tom, we have to put it by the trees so we can build the tree house!" As a team of kids wrestled the ladder toward the concrete slope, I assured her, "Don't worry, we'll take it to the trees later, but I'd feel better if we tested it on the slope first." She wasn't happy about it, but resigned herself to the delay, especially since the kids had by now achieved their destination. I made sure the lower end was sunk into the sand for stability and one-by-one they climbed the ladder to the top, then slid back down, Charlotte joining them. In fact, everyone was so engaged in the activity that I wandered off to other things for a time.

Honestly, that's where I wanted this project to end, with a nice, useful ladder for climbing to the top of the concrete slope. And that's still where I imagine it will find its permanent home, but Charlotte hasn't forgotten her tree house and what happened next makes me start to believe that one way or another, that damn tree house is going to happen.

To be continued . . . (Click here for part three)

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