Minecraft for Mind Craft: Revisioning the Pumpkin Patch
With the Halloween season being upon us, I decided to create my own pumpkin patch. Instead of creating a traditional pumpkin patch out on a barn or by a corn maze, I chose for the location to be in a more urban setting. Also, instead of using real pumpkins for the pumpkin patch, I made my own pumpkins out of cardboard.
The location of which I chose to set up my pumpkin patch was at my friends restaurant, Hacienda Villareal. I decided to choose this location because it is located in a less affluent part of the city. The restaurant is located near section 8 housing. My idea was to bring a pumpkin patch to children who otherwise, may not have the opportunity to go to a traditional pumpkin patch. In order to make sure that word got out of the pumpkin patch, we used the restaurant’s social media to invite people and their children to attend the pumpkin patch.
The process of creating the pumpkins involved collecting a lot of cardboard boxes and paper towel rolls. Once I collected enough supplies, I painted the boxes orange and the paper towel rolls green. The end product was a square pumpkin that I was to hand out along with a sharpie. The thought behind this was that instead of carving out the pumpkin how it’s normally done, the pumpkins would be decorated using the sharpie.
In order to try and reach as many children as I possibly could, I conducted the pumpkin patch for two days. Both of them being right before halloween. I noticed that the majority of the children went on the first day of the pumpkin patch, which was the Sunday before halloween. On the second day, which was the evening before halloween there was still a good amount of kids who went. Although the pumpkin patch was mostly intended for children, anyone who wanted to decorate a pumpkin was able to. All that I asked in return for a pumpkin was for everyone to answer a quick questionnaire I had created.
I created a questionnaire because I thought it would be interesting to see what children think about certain things. Often times people think that children don’t know anything, or that what they think is not important. I don’t agree with this at all, in fact I believe that in some cases adults can learn from children. In order to delve into the children’s minds, the questionnaire consisted of simple questions such as “Who’s your favorite superhero or villain?” to more complex questions such as that of global warming, or the president.
A lot of the children decorated there pumpkins with some cool faces, and even some super hero logos. I wonder if they got their inspiration to add super hero logos from my question in the questionnaire that asked, “Who’s your favorite superhero or villain?”.
Although there were a lot of interesting responses the kids answered on the questionnaire, There was a few that stuck out to me. Here are some of their answers.
I found this response to be interesting because when asked if he thinks the president takes care of his citizens, the boy responded “ I kind of do and don’t, but Abraham Lincoln did take care of us”.
Not only did this girl complete the questionnaire, but she also graded herself with an A+. Her responses that stuck out to me were when she was asked if she thinks the president takes care of his citizens. She responded, “Yes, but not Mexicans”, “Why”. The other question that stuck out was, if she liked soda or water better? She responded with, “water because it does not make you fat!”. The fact she answered in this manner makes me wonder at what age young girls start to worry about their body image.
I was surprised by the fact that this young boy wants to be an electrical engineer when he grows up. Not very many children choose this as a profession at the age of 10.
