Our Planet

Text : Tomoko Nagao

A staff was printing out copies with the xerox machine. Children started to hand over the paper to adults. When they started to get rough with paper, I said “please be gentle with the paper. Otherwise, it would crumble”. One of them asked “what happens if it crumbles?”. Well, let’s see!

We get some paper and fold them. But the children ask “How do I fold this? How?”
Perhaps teaching them how to fold was difficult, so we started to crumble them and make noise.
If we crumble them like drumsticks and beat it on a table, it makes a “pon pon pon” sound..
If we crumble them freely, it makes the “kusha kusha kusha” sound. If we flick them with a finger, then it makes a dry “pan! pan!” sound.
When it crumbled completely, we decided to make a rice ball and started to sing. “In this lunchbox ♪”
“Who can make the smallest rice ball?”, we started to show each other our creation. Then we started to spread it carefully so it wouldn’t rip.

“It’s so wrinkly”
“So crumbly”
“It has so many wrinkles”
“The paper became a grandma” (said Tomoko)
“Why did it become a grandma?”
“Because it has so many wrinkles. When you become older, people get wrinkles”.
“Everyone has wrinkles. Look.” We show each other’s palms.

Children were drawing prior and after the event, so I drew lines along the wrinkles with the colored pencils. Long wrinkles, short wrinkles. Y-chan started to pull the paper from both ends and made sound with the paper. Kusha kusha pan pan. I started to mimic her, and went back and forth with her. It was a musical session with the paper.

S-kun came in the room with a spread out paper that was once crumbled on top of his head.
Since his paper had so many wrinkles, it fit nicely onto his head and looked like a helmet.
“looks nice!”, I mimicked him.
With the paper on their heads, children started to bend their knees, stand up, bend again, jumped. They all started to move with a paper on their head.

 

Next thing you know, Y-chan has a crayon in her hand and started to draw the paper. It was beautiful to see her draw. It looked like she was knitting the wrinkles on the paper. After she was done with drawing, she cut off the paper in small pieces.
After everything, we went to a park with a paper ball and threw them really far.