Today we explored the differences between villages and towns together and learned more about the history of our own town, Măgurele.
We talked about the ways of life particular to each: what you find in a village and what you find in a town, how distances change, along with occupations and the rhythm of the day. The children brought in examples from their own families — grandparents in the countryside, cousins in the city — and so the lesson stopped being a list of differences and became a comparison between places they know.
The part about Măgurele was their favourite. A child walks the same streets every day without wondering how long they have been there or why they look the way they do. Once they start wondering, their town suddenly becomes interesting, and from there an early form of historical thinking begins: the things around us have not always been this way, and will not stay this way either.
At the end, the children built their own town. Through colouring, cutting and glueing, each of them put their imagination to work, and the results were lovely. It is an exercise that asks more than it appears to: to make a town work you have to think about what cannot be missing — the school, the shop, the road that links them — and only then start decorating.