Comments on: Sand Tables

By: Justin

Justin — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:43:03 +0000

I don’t know whether this belongs on THIS post, Justin, or one of the Funny Bones! I wasn't sure whether it was funny or not, so I added it here. BTW, since my familiarity with Log Cabin Syrup doesn't date back to 1938, I looked up an ad from the period to get an idea of the container's appearance.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:39:21 +0000

Coffinberry, I too remember the days when the only carpet in the entire building was the foyer, RS room, and the aisles/front of the chapel. No doubt the practice of carpeting everything (sometimes including the gym … er, cultural hall) would make it questionable whether a sand table could be used today even for a special event. I’d hope a good vacuum and a promise to use it well would clear the way, though, if someone really wanted to try it for a one-time activity.

Acegrace, do you think that all the high tech teaching aids could create a certain charm to the low tech ones, used once in a while? A teacher might have to be prepared to deal with some ultra cool ringleader who would turn up her nose, but presented in the right way kids just might have the same reaction as some readers here.

By: Coffinberry

Coffinberry — Sun, 31 May 2009 13:46:43 +0000

Off topic, but wanted to second that observation about carpeting, this memory from the mid 1960s-70s… My grandparent’s branch was all (linoleum? vinyl? asbestos?) tile floor in green. The Stop 11 Road Stake Center in south Indianapolis had carpet in the foyer, relief society room, and the aisles only of the chapel. Under the pews was white (linoleum? vinyl? asbestos?) tile, perfect for diving under the pews on my dress’s skirt and coming up again two or three rows away at the nearest elderly couple known to have candy in their pockets and interesting pins on suit lapels (masonic!) to play with. The unpadded pews made a lovely hollow drum sound when a tot in patent leather shoes marched across them during meeting.

I don’t remember a sand table, but I do remember making paper-mache puppets and paper-pasted dodecahedrons in Targeteers. Do you remember the little vinyl records in the lesson manual? The Targeteer theme seemed to involve the astronaut program somehow–we were blasting off to learn something. But enough of that: back to your regularly scheduled coolness of Keepa.

By: Acegrace

Acegrace — Sun, 31 May 2009 03:42:38 +0000

I guess the advent of carpeted halls and classrooms might have had something to do with the demise of the sand table.
Where I grew up in Wyoming and Idaho, most churches only had carpet in the chapel and the R.S. room. Since I entered Primary at 3 in 1967, I missed out! Maybe my little ADD mind would have paid more attention back then!

Actually it might have been the rise of the overhead, mimeograph and later photocopier and finally VHS and now DVD. In the days before cheap technology and more readily available and affordable materials (even in faraway Atlanta at our local LDS bookstore), they had to use their ingenuity. I do think we have lost some student participation and “kinetic” as well as “visual” instruction (2 of the 3 modes taught in learning) in the process.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sun, 31 May 2009 02:03:30 +0000

I don’t know whether this belongs on THIS post, Justin, or one of the Funny Bones!

This is wonderful, Justin. It suggests that the sand table tableau of pioneers and settling the west was a recurring teaching technique (maybe like making a tableau of Palestine by using small milk cartons covered with salt clay was in vogue during the ’50s and ’60s — did that continue long enough for anybody else to remember it?).

By: Justin

Justin — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:26:55 +0000

I came across the following bit in the September 1938 Improvement Era:

CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE

IT WAS one of the little girl’s first visits to a Sunday School. She was very much impressed by a sand table picturing the settling of the Saints in the valley. Log Cabin Syrup cans were used for houses for the pioneers. When she returned home she said:

“Mother, do you know what?”

The mother asked what she meant and she replied:

“The pioneers lived in tin cans.”

—Submitted by Mrs. F. P. Greenhalgh, Nephi, Utah.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:07:07 +0000

I think it is, Left ("Eagle Eye") Field. There was a series of cut-outs in the Children's Friend early on that included buildings for a model Nauvoo.

By: Left Field

Left Field — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:17:54 +0000

Is that the Nauvoo Temple in the distance?

By: Eric Boysen

Eric Boysen — Sat, 30 May 2009 13:22:06 +0000

Church buildings I frequent seem to frown on anything that can’t be moved. Our classrooms seem to be like Shaker halls where everything must be easy to put asideto be able to clear the floor. When you are done, everything has to go into a closet, chairs stacked to get them out of the way. Sometimes it seems so sterile.

My kindergarten classroom had a fiberglass water table with a few precast basins and canyons that we floated toys on. We also used sand tables in the Army to plan operations.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sat, 30 May 2009 02:47:25 +0000

It shouldn’t be hard to build, or expensive, either, if you have a local source of clean sand. If cleanup is part of the deal, why wouldn’t it be as acceptable as some of the gloppy, goopy activities that already take place in the cultural hall? Go for it! (And report back here.)

I’m lovin’ the way so many of us are captivated by something as simple and low tech as this is. Maybe we need to teach kids how to play again.