ABSTRACT
The chapter involves a very long science unit on soap bubbles which was taught in the first and second grade combination class. A design, in teaching, in classroom interactions, in science, is composed of a background and a foreground. Those students are engaged in the actions of design as they play with the materials. The authour had planned this unit about soap bubbles to also be about design: design in the sense that Schon defines as interplay between the materials and the person, which is shaped by metaphorical images of purpose. The idea of building something is certainly purposeful, and transporting this idea to working with bubbles is equally metaphorical. In this class the geometric and metaphorical descriptions of the bubble construction are closely tied with the children's explanatory scientific theorymaking. Their theories are about how bubbles work. The class moves from a consideration of bubbles to thinking about the applicability of their ideas to other phenomena.
