“The Witch Who Turned Them into Stone” Storying the Sculpture Garden

The children are energetic as we enter the sculpture garden. This is a place that we come with some regularity, typically once every few weeks or so. As such it is not a completely novel space, but it does hold intrigue with its talk metalworks gilded in various patinas of bronze, gold, and silver. It is a warm afternoon after a cool morning, and the children’s bodies are fully primed for large, fast gross motor movement after a morning spent largely in the taxing but slower-paced activity of climbing. I am tired—as teachers sometimes are—dragging my feet as the children tumble about on the lawn. Lauren, my coteacher, watches the children with me. She is also, perhaps, tired, but has an idea up her sleeve.

There comes a moment, that many of us have likely experienced, when it is “time”. The need for a transition is present or eminent. As the children begin to dogpile, Lauren and I recognize this “time”.

What Lauren does next, however, is a stroke of genius.

“I wonder if I can find this witch!” she exclaims. Many of the children continue to wrestle, but a few look up from underneath an arm or leg.

“Witch?” one of the children asks.

In support I offer an inhale I intend to sound “astonished.”

“Yeah, the witch!” Lauren says, gaining momentum. She begins to walk toward the path. “The witch who turned all these sculptures into stone.”

 And with that, we launch into a dimension visible only through our own eyes and minds. Lauren has given us a frame within which to work, to move. It gives direction to the entirety of our visit that remains.

We come upon a soldier whom the witch turned to stone because ‘she wanted her pet dragon to go into the city, but the soldier tried to stop her,”

We lament the fates of Terry, Bobby, and Margaret—figures turned to stone on a park bench. “Your family misses you, Margaret,” Lauren says, running her hand along the sculpture. The children clamor to the laps of the figurines, whispering and offering their own condolences amidst laughter.

As I watch and document this unfolding exploration, I am struck by a thought:

Lauren is participating in the fantasy heritage of the children by offering them a layer of fantasy through which to view and interact with the sculptures in the garden. (Notes January 5, 2022)

The ways we induct children into literate behaviors is manifold; this fusion of play, story, and aesthetic experience (that also integrates a pressing need for order in a public space) is an instance of extended narrative exploration. In Playing their Way into Literacies (Teachers College Press, 2011), Karen Wohlwend writes:

“We can now recognize play as a literacy for creating and coordinating a live-action text among multiple players that invests materials with pretended meanings and slips the constraints of here-and-now realities,” (page 2)

By using fantasy play (a language, of sorts, in which the children are fluent) Lauren creates a story with them—one that captures their attention and focus, framing and giving color to their experiences within the physical realm through which their bodies move. This, after all, is the function of narrative and storytelling—to communicate ideas and ways of thinking and seeing that color our lives.