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When we were done playing, Shaan saw me making notes and added in the last few lines. He said "War is at a city 1,000,000 miles away but they can see it with a telescope. The dad is at war."

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This collaborative process was surprising for me in the meaning that I gathered and the understanding my children displayed and gained. I think our debate about the soup/burnt pancake paved the way for us to construct a story that had meaning for us all. My younger child was able to talk about missing me. My older child processed his feelings around the Russian attack on Ukraine and I was able to listen and truly be home for my kids at this moment.
While I was hoping for some actionable "provocations" (París & Hay, 2020, p. 76) at the onset of this play, by the end I realized that was simplistic and reductionist. In this one instance, I realized that my children's issues are more complicated and larger than anything in my control. However, while the outcome of this play was not a clean set of actions for me, it was more hopeful than I realized. As París & Hay (2020) describe, my children were showing me that they could be the "architects of their own education" and their preoccupation with larger social issues were gesturing toward developing a "permanent engagement of the citizen with a continually developing society, in the democratic, political sense" (p. 72).

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identifying layers of meaning- analyzing and hypothesizing

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identifying layers of meaning- analyzing and hypothesizing

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I asked the kids if their stories reminded them of anything. Kieran immediately identified that he was talking about me when he was including the mom and setting up the house and he noted that he wished I was home more, the way the mom was.
Shaan immediately described how in his play, he was talking about the events in Ukraine and how, even though it is far away, it is still effecting us.

I was again surprised at their awareness of the socio-political context we are living within. In many ways, I felt like my children were the artists and I was the student. I felt they were more comfortable as "creative enablers and facilitators of possibilities" (Rinaldi, 2001b, as cited in París & Hay, 2020, p. 78) and I was the beneficiary of their experience and knowledge.

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After we finished playing, I asked the kids about what we had been doing. I shared what I had read in the París & Hay (2020) reading, about making meaning through collaborative play. Kieran said they always make up stories when they play. Shaan noted that making stories was usually his job when playing. He said that his role in his Dragon Master book making group was to create the stories.

I was surprised at the children's ready awareness of narrative and their consciousness around constructing meaning that was true for them. I felt their participation in critical dialogue (p. 77) around our play brought about the rich reflective experience described by París & Hay (2020, p. 77).

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The kids asked me to take a picture of this, to show what the mom was still looking at. They said that this scene shows the cities that have been destroyed by the war. The children's insistence on including a far off war in this domestic story was very nuanced and sadly realistic.

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Toward the end of play time, mom returned home from the war that she had been caught up in (her role was not defined but she did need to be rescued). Shaan deliberately placed her here, just outside the house, but still looking back at the war she had just come from. He explained, "The war is countries away, but she can still see the fires burning." This awareness of the larger context we are living in was sobering for me.
I feel this image powerfully speaks to experience that cannot be expressed in language and perhaps should not be limited by words so it stay universal (p. 78).

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My other son, Shaan, then joined us. We had a long discussion about whether this was butternut squash soup (my opinion) or a burnt on pancake (my younger son's opinion) or just a toy that was stuck. Surprisingly, none of this led to conflict and all readings of this item seemed to exist simultaneously. In the midst of this discussion, I really felt that we had a "glow moment" (París & Hay, 2020, p. 77) in which we all realized how different our perspectives were, but that didn't need to lead to conflict.

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I thought this brown dog could be a friend to the larger dog but Kieran again insisted that this was a family and the smaller dog was the baby and the larger one was a mom. The insistence of familial relations was hard to miss.

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We started playing with blocks and then my child, Kieran, wanted to introduce characters. Especially, he wanted there to be a mom who stays at home with baby, while "someone else" went to work at university. This was a little hard for me to hear but I was glad to hear him process.
It was also really interesting for me see his process of constructing narrative through "verbal and visual languages" (París & Hay, 2020, p. 78)