The mouse house

- researching place and time with 5-6 year olds

What is a home? How can we feel ‘at home’ at school? What places matter to us? How does time feel there?

A vintage photo-story book begins this project. ‘Mouse looks for a house’ by Helen Piers inspires two children to make a paper shelter for a tiny ceramic mouse and place it in a bookshelf. Over many weeks a home develops, not just for mice, but for children’s competence, creativity and thoughts about time, place and belonging. In some ways the children represent what home means to them: a place that is warm, comfortable, relaxing, decorative. At the same time the children shape a world as they would love it to be: in which time feels expansive, where party day can be any day, where the ordinary and the fantastical live happily side by side.

Educator: Deb Wilenski / Teaching assistant Mariamma Klepetko / Children of ECW class (International School of Prague)