Early Childhood Studio Lesson
ALBERT’SSSSSSS
AA A AAALPHABET
Ann R. Erickson
Icould see in her eyes when the
light bulb went on and she had
figured out her solution.” This
was a comment made by a parent volunteer after she helped with
a kindergarten lesson called Albert’s
Alphabet. This lesson introduces the
design thinking process to kindergartners in a developmentally appropriate way. I was asked to pilot this
lesson for the Virginia Department of
Education’s Technology Department
when they were creating a series of
lessons tied to different standards of
learning for each elementary grade
level.
As the elementary art teacher, I
began the lesson by asking students
if anyone knew what design is. I then
told them that we were going to do
a lesson on designing and building
something, and also learn about the
design thinking process.
Reading the Book
I began the lesson by reading Leslie Tryon’s book Albert’s Alphabet,
which tells the story of Albert Goose,
the carpenter for Pleasant Valley
School. Albert has received a memorandum from the school’s principal
instructing him to build each letter of
the alphabet to decorate the school’s
walking path. He has less than a day
and only limited materials to accomplish his task, so Albert has to use
his imagination and building skills to
create the various letters.
As we read the book, we saw how
Albert cuts things apart, bundles
things together, sees the shapes of
letters in existing objects, and carves
letters out of other objects. We analyzed each picture to discover how he
creatively completes his task. Embedded in the book’s illustrations is an
amazing amount of information on
materials, joints, tools, design, and
ingenuity. As the children identified
these things, I told them the proper
name of the building technique
Albert used or showed them what the
real tool looks like.
The Design
Challenge
After reading the book, I
brought out a memoran-
dum (ostensibly from
our principal) asking the
kindergartners to build
models of letters for our
school. I then gave them
their design challenge,
which was: Construct
a letter of the alphabet
from materials brought
from home or found in
the classroom that will:
( 1) stand by itself, ( 2)
be sturdy, and ( 3) look
good. With anticipation
building, I asked them
to brainstorm a list of
how to join things, and
their ideas invariably
became more creative as
I pushed them to think
