Read field notes about this activity

Name of Activity:. CARNIVAL

Category:. Adventure/Journey

Props: A ticket booth, tickets, stamper, ink pad, and prizes. Various carnival-like activities including horse shoes, face painting, darts, and chairs set up for Aimaginary@ car, boats, or train rides, and of course, a prize for a good job.

Your Role: Your role is different for each stage. During the ticket selling stage, your role is essentially either play partner or travel guide. During the carnival, your role can take on aspects of all five: historian, travel guide, coach, model, or play partner. And for the culminating activity, your job is primarily historian (albeit a short term memory historian) and coach--you want your child to retrieve images of the carnival experience and use those images to create a culminating piece, story, picture, or photo.

Directions: This activity is a several part activity and will probably take at least 2 hour to conduct. The first stage is the ticket purchase stage, during which you sell tickets to your child and stamp his/her hand. The second stage is the carnival itself, during which you experience horse shoes, darts, face painting, and Aimaginary ride.@ The final stage is the culminating stage during which you assist your child in completing the circle--ie making a collage or picture, writing a story, or setting up a photo opportunity during which you snap the photo.

Goals for You: Each stage has a different set of goals: the ticket selling stage requires that you help pull your child into the play activity by helping him/her want to continue, as well as well as assisting him/her in retrieving images of his/her own previous ticket buying experiences. You also want to provide your child with activities which he/she focuses on and stores in terms of images. Since rich and detailed experiences help make rich and detailed images, your goal is to provide an elaborate play experience--ripping tickets, getting a stamp, counting the money--all these details help entice your child and also provide the detail necessary for rich imagery storage. The second stage=s goals are to help your child experience a wonderful carnival--several of the activities are primarily here and now ones. In other words, you actually play horseshoes, play darts, get your face painted, and win prizes. These activities help your child make tactile, kinesthetic, olfactory and visual images. The other one--the Aimaginary ride@--is different than the others, it requires that your child retrieve images in order to experience the activity. Your job is to help the child focus, attend to detail, and store images. You may want to talk to your child, or cheer your child in order to keep him or her involved. (Note: please do not chat with your child and distract him/her from the task. ). Finally, your goal is to help your child retrieve the images in order to use them for an Aartistic@ product. So, the experience (and perhaps other similar experiences) provide the images for this piece.

Goals for Children: Your child has 2 goals: to fully experience the carnival and to use these experiences to make a final product.

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Material on this site created by Helane S. Rosenberg, Ph.D. and Yakov M. Epstein, Ph.D. in conjunction with their forthcoming book titled Play for Success. All material on this site is copyrighted and may not be reproduced or cited without written permission of Helane S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.. Dr. Rosenberg is Associate Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education of Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Epstein is Professor of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Science of Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, NJ. He is also Director of the Center for Mathematics, Science, and Computer Education of Rutgers University.

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