Staying Connected

Sometimes life pulls us away from our everyday routines. Jasper’s family works on  documentaries and they traveled recently to Switzerland for over three weeks. They had established a tradition where they create a book from their travels, naming it :______ is Beautiful.  Switzerland is Beautiful was made from Jasper’s first trip to the country during his infancy and shared at circle time before he left.

While in Switzerland, Laura, Jasper’s mother, kept in touch with the teachers via email. We scheduled a time to connect the children via Skype (a video chat service). At morning circle everyone took turns saying hello to Jasper on the computer screen. He told us about the the beautiful lush green mountains outside his hotel topped with white snow along the top, the caves in the mountains, and that there were friendly dragons inside the caves. The class was abuzz with questions for Jasper. In order not to overwhelm Jasper (there is a nine hour time difference and he had just woken up from his nap!), we sent everyone’s inquiries via email:

Emailed Questions

Genevieve: “What does the hotel look like?”

Xavier: “What do dragons look like?”

David: “Dragons have wings.” Pulling from his own information about dragons, David offers his expertise.

Michael: “No they don’t.” Michael counters.

Paola: “Do dragons have wings?”

Imonie: “I was wondering if the dragons have caves?” Imonie wants to flesh out the details to see if this theory holds water, that dragons are real.

Genevieve: “What do the caves look like?” Piqued, Genevieve searches for mental images.

Charlie: “I wonder if the dragons have mommies and daddies.” Charlie knows that first, you’re identified by you in relation to your family.

David: “They don’t have mommies or daddies. They live by themselves.” David again asserts his knowledge.

Oliver: “Maybe dragons fly but I don’t know if they have real wings.” Analysing the possibilities of dragons being real.

Griffin: “Are there real dragons in Switzerland?” A direct question, Griffin wants a yes or no answer.

Jake: “Isn’t it crazy!!? I never knew there was such a thing as real dragons! Maybe they are sculptures.” Jake tries to justify Jasper’s testimony with his own reality.

Griffin: “Of course they are real!” Looks like Griffin wants a ‘yes’!

Jake: “It’s cool.” Imagination wrestles with facts.

Lev: “I think they are not real.” Adding to the debate.

Answers to Emailed Questions

We read his response the next day: “Dragons do have real wings, but dragons don’t have families, but our hotel looks like a dragon. The dragons do have caves. They live in the caves. and the caves are dark and look like dragons. In Switzerland they speak a lot of languages; like German, French, Italian, and even English. Jasper wants to tell you that dragons are real.” There was a variety of responses to this information:

Maddox: “I do not want to go to go to Switzerland.”

Morgan: “I do!”

Jake: “That’s crazy. I want to know if he has seen a real dragon.”

We invited the children to represent their interpretations of this information at their appointments.