"It's A Fire Contraption!"

Half-inch PVC pipe should be a staple in any classroom.

From a teacher's perspective it's convenient to have around for putting together all kinds of quick and sturdy structures, such pendulum painters, monkey bars, and sandpit plumbing for a mud pie kitchen.

And for kids, it's a sky's-the-limit building set for making big things fast. Most of what we have, I cut into 4 standard lengths many years ago, hoping they could be used kind of like unit blocks to create simple geometric shapes, but frankly, I'm primarily the one who takes advantage of this feature. The kids tend to create more linear things.

In the past they've used them to make marble runs and motorcycles, but by far the most popular things to manufacture are weapons. The problem we have with this is that the children always chose to ban weapons, both real and pretend. This class has gone deeper into the school year than any previous class before making this rule, but last week, for the 10th straight year, the children have elected to ban playing guns.

Adults will ask me if we pressured the children in any way. I know I didn't, unless very subtly. We do have a standing policy that you may only "shoot" or otherwise involve others in your games or stories with their permission, and I cannot vouch for what parents may be saying at home, but up until this week there was a small group of occasional "weapons players" in our midst. There had been a few instances of one child insisting that another "stop" shooting at him, but I genuinely didn't see this coming. In fact, I was stewing on the post I was going to write in June about our fully-armed school year, trying to figure out what made this year different than the others.

Then, last week, during circle time, Rex raised his hand, "I have a rule."

"Rex wants to suggest a rule."

"No playing weapons."

Rex is a bold, middle-of-the-action kind of kid. In fact, I know he's taken part in some of the gun play this year and hadn't seemed at all unsettled by it.

"Did everyone hear that? Rex suggests we make a rule that says, 'No playing weapons.'" I scanned the group, waiting for a response. I made eye contact with the boys who had been having fun with dramatic play involving weapons. "That means no guns, real or pretend." We make all our rules by true consensus, all it would take would be for one person to speak up against this rule. This group has rejected other proposed rules, so they know how it works. 

Ordinarily, that would be as far as I go before saying, "Okay then, that's a rule," and writing it on our lists, but I really wanted to make sure everyone understood what we were deciding. "Rex, why do you think we should have this rule?"

"Because people might get scared."

I asked the group in general, "Does this mean no shooting?" There was general nodding and a few vocal affirmatives. I again made eye contact with the boys who like playing these games, giving them a chance to speak up, but they were nodding too. "And this means no pretend guns, right?" Nodding. "And this means no pretend swords or knives, right?" Nodding. I let it hang again, almost hoping that one of the pro-gun play guys would speak. At least two of them are not normally shy about speaking up, but they were not only silent, but giving all the outward signs of paying close attention and agreeing with the decision of the group. "Okay then, that's a rule: no playing weapons . . . Because we don't want to scare our friends."

Then I finished as I do after making each of our new rules, "So if you see someone playing weapons in school you can say . . ."

And the kids finished for me, "Stop!"

". . . and that person has to stop because they're breaking the rules we made together."

Yesterday, when I turned the PVC pipe over to Addison's mom Jen, our parent-teacher at the work bench, I made sure she was aware of the children's new rule, but that I didn't want her to be "too hardcore" about enforcing it. I didn't want to stomp on anyone's fun unless it somehow upset the other kids.

The children built all kinds of non-gunlike things at the work bench with our PVC pipe collection. For instance, Lily made a bench, but she worried that it wasn't "sturdy enough" for actual sitting and involved others in helping her. Gray and Addison also created impressive inventions, but it was Rex who really went to town, putting together a long piece that he seemed to enjoy holding.

"What do you call this?" I asked.

"It's a fire gun."

Despite my words to Jen, I couldn't help myself, "But you just made a rule against guns!"

"Oh yeah . . . It's a fire . . ."

I waited for a bit, then began to offer vocabulary suggestions, "Contraption? Apparatus? Machine? Thing-a-ma-bob?"

"It's a fire contraption!"

He held his fire gun for a while longer, then wanted to put it down in a "safe place." 

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