Memories of a kindergarten Hair Salon mini-inquiry: "What happens at a hair salon?"

 

One day at the end of September, two students took a chair to the corner of our classroom and within a few minutes, several others had formed a line by that corner. We (the educators) wondered what was going on. As far as we could tell, there was nothing exciting to see or do there - but we were wrong! As we watched and listened, we discovered that those two students had opened a hair salon! With nothing but a chair and some scraps of paper (‘tickets’), they were fully engaged in running a little business for their friends.

Our students’ play that day became the spark for a mini hair salon inquiry, guided by the question, “What happens at a hair salon?”

We were eager to extend our students’ play and learning, so we asked them how we could help make their hair salon as realistic as possible. A team of interested little entrepreneurs worked together to make a plan based on what they already knew about real hair salons.

At the end of the day, we looked together online for videos of children visiting hair salons, and we paused to add pictures and words to our plan whenever the students noticed other components they had not already thought of.

Over the next few days, we provided the students with as many materials as we could find that they’d indicated on their plan - spray bottles, an old computer monitor, loose parts like pebbles to use as ‘money’, several pairs of plastic playdough scissors, bowls to use as hair dryers, as well as smocks and some child-sized furniture (cupboards and shelves).  We invited families to help us upgrade the salon, and they sent empty shampoo bottles, a “business license” sign, and some other special supplies like combs and even sunglasses! We also stocked our classroom book bins with nonfiction books about hair salons, as well as hair-related fiction stories to look at and read together.

We loved playing hair salon during outdoor learning time, too. During every appointment, students practised counting to either 10 or 20, depending on how long of a wash the clients requested, how many ‘snips’ they wanted for the cut, and how many seconds they wanted their hair to be dried. When appointments were finished, the hairdressers asked for payment of up to 10 dollars, and students used pinecones, stones, or sticks to represent the correct dollar amounts.

As always, every day we recorded our memories in our outdoor learning journals.

One rainy day, we came in after outdoor learning time and found a surprise letter on our whiteboard. Our principal had heard about our hair salon, and she wanted to book an appointment!

A team worked together to write a letter in reply.

It said:

To Mrs. Reynolds,

I am enjoying the rain.

We like to splash in the puddles!

We sing the petunia song.

I like playing with the balls (but not with friends who disturb me at circle time).

We like playing in the rain.

You can come to our hair salon tomorrow.

It is called the Cool Cuts for Kids hair salon.

Come here and get a hair cut.

It will be the best in the world!

You have to pay money to the cash register.

We will be happy to see you at our salon.

We love you and we wish you can come to our hair salon.

Love, the kids

When Mrs. Reynolds’ appointment time came, the kids were excited and proud to show her how well they could count as they washed, cut, and dried her hair.

Throughout this inquiry, we had meaningful opportunities to notice and celebrate diversity - including noticing physical features like hair colour, length, and texture - amongst students and educators in our class. We created several bar graphs together to analyse similarities and differences about our hair. Our graphs were also useful to practise counting and comparing number amounts.

As an artistic end to our hair salon inquiry, we worked on a whole-class art project to create a wall of hair style pictures in our salon. We wanted our pictures to represent the diversity amongst the members of our class. Students created portraits and thought about their own hair (as well as their skin, eyes, and other facial features), carefully selected paint colours that best represented those features, and added hair using natural materials found outside during outdoor learning time. Notice that students used the natural materials to show darker- and lighter-coloured hair, different lengths and textures, and some even added beautiful decorative pieces!

Although this inquiry lasted for only a couple of weeks, it provided us with meaningful literacy and math experiences (e.g. journaling about our memories, enjoying readalouds, becoming familiar with distinctions between fiction and nonfictiont texts, counting beyond ten, representing numbers -including using graphs - and comparing number amounts). Perhaps more significantly, this inquiry provided valuable opportunities for rich discussions, friendship- and community-building, developing self-awareness, and celebrating the wonderful uniqueness (physically speaking) of each one in our class.