Box divider with tubes

Over the years, I have built apparatus to divide the sensory table into discreet spaces.  Here is one of the first ones I ever built over 25 years ago.  In this early version, I used a long, narrow box to divide the sand table into two sections.

On different levels, I embedded three small cardboard tubes through the box.  I also added a PVC pipe that I taped to the box on an incline.   The box was longer than the sand table so I cut notches in the bottom of the box to slip over the lip of the table on two sides.  That allowed me to securely tape the box to the table.  This structure rose vertically from the table so if it was not securely taped down, the children could have dislodged it by using minimal horizontal force on the top of the apparatus.

I taped the box above the bottom of the table so the children still had room underneath the box for their operations.

To tape the incline to the box, I jury-rigged a paper brick to lessen the incline and to hold the end of the pipe above the bottom of the table.  To help keep it stable and make the whole apparatus even more secure, I also taped the pipe to the lip of the clear plastic sand table

I taped a homemade hopper to the top of the pipe to direct the sand down the pipe.  I made the hopper from an empty paint bottle by cutting off the top and part of one side.  I kept the bottom to give the hopper structural strength.

The hopper worked well.  Without the hopper it would have been harder to pour sand down the inclined pipe.  That was especially true when the children tried to pour a bucket of sand down the pipe; without the hopper, most of it would have missed the pipe.

Though the box divided the sand table in two, children used the embedded tubes to connect the two spaces.  In so doing, they were also working on their proprioception.  What physiological feedback did this child get as he put his hand in the tube to deliver the sand to the other side?  And what physiological feedback did he get as he turned his hand inside the tube to dump the sand from the spoon?  He could not see his hand, wrist and part of his arm because they were in the tube, but his internal sensory receptors informed his actions.

The children also used the embedded tubes to connect in play.  Below, one child is reaching with a spoon full of sand through a tube to deposit it in another child's container.  To guide her actions, she watched her own actions through the tube.  On the other side, a child focused on the spoon and constantly adjusted his actions so he could receive the gift of sand from the other. 

That may look very simple to adults, but it was a highly complex set of coordinated actions.  Were the actions verbally mediated or were they totally action driven?  I honestly do not know, but can imagine that either may have been true.   What I do know is that this apparatus fostered this interaction and without the apparatus, it never would have happened.

I have always been intrigued by how children explore spaces and the elements within those spaces.    Sometimes those explorations are solitary but often times the explorations are in solidarity with others.  They continually improvise within the immediacy of their world.  If their immediate world at the sand table is rich in possibilities, the potential for those improvisations grows exponentially.   

Funnels part 2

Last year I wrote a post on funnels.   In that post I explained how I used funnels when I built apparatus and how children used them as loose parts.  After watching a video multiple times that I posted two weeks ago, I saw something new and different that made me want to revisit funnels.  What I saw in the video was how the funnel changed the flow of the sand into a narrow stream.

Plugging the funnel 2 from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

In essence, the funnel transformed the sand that was poured into a wide-mouth opening to a narrow and precise stream.  I began to wonder how else funnels were used by the children to create other transformations.  With a quick dive into my archives, I did find some interesting transformations.  Here are a few.

One of the first transformations was simply covering a large hole with a funnel.  In the picture below the child covered one of the vertical tubes with a red funnel.   If a child poured sand directly down a tube, it quickly disappeared down the hole.  But when the child covered the hole with a funnel, the sand filled the funnel and was channeled so the flow of sand was slowed and evenly regulated down the tube.

Because the funnel slowed down the flow, the child observed how the sand sank into the red funnel.  What he saw was the sand sliding down from the sides into the middle of the funnel.

In other words, the funnel transformed how the sand flowed through the embedded tube.

What did that transformation look like from the bottom?  In the video below, a child poured sand into a funnel that was placed over one of the tubes embedded vertically in a box.  As soon as he finished pouring the sand, he crouched down to see how the sand exited the tube.

Checking the flow from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

It came out as a pencil-fine stream.  I speculate that the transformation caught the child's interest because he could not see the actual transformation of the sand from his cup to a fine stream.  He could not see because the tube was embedded in the box making part of the operation invisible to him.  In addition, the thin stream was framed by the larger diameter of the pipe through which it traveled completing the intriguing contrast between how he poured the sand into the funnel and how the sand exited the tube.

Here was an interesting transformation using a funnel with water.  The child used a funnel to cover the end of a horizontal pipe.  Up until this point, the water flowed freely out of the bottom of the pipe.  When the child positioned the funnel over the pipe, the flow was first blocked.  As the pipe filled with water, the hydraulic pressure built up behind the funnel so the water was pushed out with enough force to form a waterspout.

The child pictured below had a different idea of how to use the funnel to transform the flow of water.  This child inserted the stem of the funnel into the tube.

Now instead of a water coming out of the tube like through a nozzle, the funnel dispersed the water so the flow was not so organized.

In the video below the child actually used two funnels to carry out a transformation with water.  Ostensibly the transformation was filling a bubble bottle using a combination of the two funnels.  The child inserted a plastic syringe (first funnel) into a blue bubble bottle.  She placed a red funnel (2nd funnel) onto the syringe.   After pouring a second cup of water into the red funnel, the water started to overflow from the top of the bubble bottle.  She tried to catch the overflow with another bottle, but that did not work.  Finally she took the syringe with the red funnel out of the bubble bottle and emptied the rest of the water from the syringe into another bottle.

Overflow from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

I appreciated how calm this child was throughout the whole operation.  She knew she was spilling but she seemed more interested in the transformation from filling to spilling.  Because the syringe had such a constricted stem, she was able to watch the transformation in slow motion.  And finally come up with a solution to the spilling issue.

Here was one last transformation.  The child in the video below used a long black funnel to redirect the flow of water coming out of a tube into another flexible tube.

Redirecting the water from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

In this case, the child used a funnel to transform the path of the water.   The transformation may not have been efficient, but it sure was joyous.

Are these examples with funnels really transformations?  I am not sure because the transformations are not permanent.  The funnels do transform and shape how the different mediums flow, but then the different mediums revert to their original state.  Is there such a thing as transient transformation?  If so, the children have used their agency to come up with a whole host of explorations to make some sense of this phenomenon.    

The question is: Am I making any sense?

Conference musings

This past weekend I was invited up to Devil's Lake, North Dakota to do a building session for the North Dakota Childcare Providers Association annual conference.  

After my morning presentation of a building framework, the participants had about an hour to start their building.  Because we were working in the cafeteria and the tables we were working on were our lunch tables, they had to pack their unfinished contraptions into a corner during the lunch hour.  After lunch, though, they could not wait to start building again.

Two builders who were worked side-by-side made two separate but similar incline constructions.  Both used long narrow boxes on an incline.  Both cut holes as windows so whoever played with the construction would get glimpses of the marbles or beads racing down the incline.  They each set the boxes at an angle in a shoe box.  They cut holes in the end of the shoe box so the marbles or beads crossed through the box into receptacle boxes that they fashioned from the lids of the shoe boxes.  The two constructions looked the same, but were slightly different.

Though they each made separate constructions, their plan all along was to combine the two to make one construction.  This was a great illustration of how individual inventiveness could be combined to create something new.  See below.

Two other builders were ingenious in their own right.  Their idea was to make a ball cascade with pieces of gutter.   To do that, they fashioned a two cardboard pieces to suspend and hold the top gutter in place above the bottom gutter so when the ball rolled down the top gutter, it would drop into the bottom gutter and go on its way out the box.

For someone to build in a workshop like this, they have to take a risk, an intellectual and emotional risk.  The questions come fast and furious.  How do we start?  Oh, that doesn't work, so how do we modify it?  What is your idea?  How do we make it work?  There are also physical risks involved, too.  For instance, working with sharp tools carries its own risk.

Did I say risk? 

Niki Buchan was the keynote for the conference.  Niki is from Australia and does consulting around the world on outdoor learning for children and adults.  Well, even Niki got into building.  She created a rotating construction by making a cardboard washer between a cardboard base and a cardboard platform that held three small cardboard tubes.

 

At the end of the sessions, the builders were asked to leave their constructions in the hall so other conference attendees could see the possibilities for cardboard constructions for the sensory table.

On Monday after the conference, a couple of the educators sent me some pictures of things they had already built.  Below is one of those pictures.  I noticed that the incline for the apparatus was not very steep so the child needed to push the pellets down the cardboard chute.

When I mentioned that, the educator wrote back that the child was pretending that he was making cement.  He would push the pellets down the chute much like a cement worker would push cement down the chute coming off the cement truck.   She also said that he used a dust pan like a mixing blade to mix the cement in the pail.  She added that his dad was in construction.

In their play scenarios, children in early childhood settings recreate the work of adults.  For the most part, however, that play is in the housekeeping area of the classroom.  Because of the way this educator set up this apparatus in the sensory table, this child was able to represent in his play what he has seen his father do at work.  He could be his father in play.  How cool is that?

What is the teacher's role?

About a year ago, I wrote a blog post on children's scientific explorations with rocks in the sensory table.  Looking back one of the episodes in the post, I think I got one wrong. Here is the episode I think I got wrong.

Some experiments children create do not have the intended result.  In the video below, two children try to plug a funnel with rocks.  After adding rocks to the funnel, the sand still flows through the bottom of the funnel.  One child brings more rocks so the funnel is completely full of rocks.  However, when he pours sand in the top of the funnel it still flows out the bottom to his consternation.

Plugging the funnel from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

When I asked him why the rocks do not plug the funnel, he said he does not know.  At this point, they no longer pursue this investigation, but move on to other explorations with the clear plastic tube and sand.  Scientists reach dead ends all the time, but like these two, continue to explore new veins of inquiry.

In looking over my documentation, I found a subsequent video that casts a little different light on this episode and opens up a different line of thought for me.

Let me start with the different line of thought.  After adding more rocks to the funnel, the child says he does not know why the sand still flows through the funnel.  At that point, I could have explained that there are still spaces between the rocks so the sand can still get through the funnel.  To prove the point, I could have also suggested that they put their contraption on the ground so they could see the sand flow through the spaces between the rocks.  Instead, I decided to keep quiet.  I thought that if I interjected myself at this particular point in time, I would necessarily change the direction of their inquiry.  And, I don't think my job is to always give children the answers to their questions.  Rather, it is more important for me to give them time and space to further play with those questions.

As it turns out, the children did not really reach a dead end.  They actually continued this same inquiry with the rocks, sand, funnel and tube.  However, it did take an interesting tangent.

In the video below, the sand has stopped flowing through the funnel.  It is not because the children have plugged it with rocks.  Rather, the sand in the tube is so high that it plugs the funnel so no more sand can flow into the tube.  In fact, the sand has backed up into the funnel so the funnel itself is full of sand.  At this point, the children start to take the rocks out of the funnel.  The sand still does not start to flow.  The child in the red shirt starts to lift the funnel out of the tube.  To their great delight, the sand starts flowing again.  The child who is holding the tube squeals with delight.  Interestingly, the pitch of her squeal rises as the sand rises in the tube.  As the sand empties out of the funnel, the sand forms a little mound just above the height of the tube.


Plugging the funnel 2 from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

They may not have figured out exactly why the rocks did not stop the flow of sand through the funnel.  They may not have understood that the sand in the tube blocked  the flow of sand through the funnel.  I do think they were starting to understand a bit about flow and volume.  The most important outcome of their investigation, though,  has to be their palpable joy. 

My overarching question is: How do teachers decide when, where and how to intervene in children's explorations and play?  Are we so driven by a superimposed need to make sure children are learning all the time that we intervene too often?  In this particular instance, I am glad I stepped back so the children could direct their own inquiry and reach that point of pure joy.  And the great thing about joy is that it reinforces their agency to keep exploring.

Tubes embedded in a big box

Over fifteen years ago, I put together an apparatus using an large box and two cardboard tubes.  One tube was longer but not as wide as the other.  I cut a window of sorts in the longer tube so the children could see the sand rush down the tube midstream.   Both tubes emptied into the tub next to the sand table.

 

I embedded the two cardboard tubes at different angles.   I made the incline greater for the longer tube on the left and not as great for the wider tube on the right.   The tube on the left was steep enough so the children could easily pour directly down the tube.  I modified the tube on the right by cutting a piece away from the top.  Otherwise, the children would have had a harder time pouring sand down the hole.

I created one more feature for this apparatus.  I cut part of the back panel of the box to create a space underneath and inside the box.

For the children, this apparatus provided the opportunity for them to move the sand from the sensory table out of the sensory table to a tub set next to the end of the table.  That was important because---as stated in axiom #1 on the right---children need transport what is in the table out of the table. 

The tubes gave them a constructive way to do what they needed to do.

Besides all the action up top, there was also a commensurate amount of action on the bottom.  Interestingly, the children at the bottom could not see when someone poured something down the tube because the box itself obstructed their view.  As a consequence, they were often surprised when something shot out of the tube. 

Over time, however, the children learned to use their sense of hearing to know when something was coming down the tubes.

Of course, a child could always try to peek.

 

I kept the apparatus up for two weeks.  However, I did make a couple of small changes for the second week.  First, I took out the sand and replaced it with whole kernel feed corn. 

Second, I cut holes on both sides of the box to install a planter tray.  That added another level for the children's operations that was partially inside the box and partially outside the box.

Over the course of two weeks, the children had two separate experiences using the same apparatus.  Corn streaming down the tubes was much different than sand streaming down the tubes.  The corn had a different smell; it was lighter, faster and noisier; and it was bouncier than the sand.   In essence, the children had an opportunity to compare the characteristics of two different mediums through the same apparatus. 

That sound likes science.

Profile picture (update)

This is a re-write of a post from February 2011.  A lot has happened since then, but the post concisely summarizes my basic view of children that has developed over time---and deserves a little update.

I would like to explain the picture I chose for my profile. The picture does not speak directly to sand and water tables, but rather to my view of children. That in turn, influences my practice which includes building apparatus for the sensory table.

This picture was taken in 2008 in a park in Los Banos, Peru.  Los Banos is famous in Peru for its thermal baths that were used by the Incas.   The baths are a short ride by combi from the city of Cajamarca in the Northern Highlands of Peru.  My daughter was living and working in Cajamarca at the time, so I went to visit her.  My daughter worked for a non-profit organization that gave mircroloans to women.  On this particular day I accompanied her to one of her meetings with the women with whom she worked.  As she was talking with one of the women in the park after the meeting, I noticed the woman's two children playing.  Before long, they were bringing me flowers.

So why the picture?   It has to do with connecting with and respecting children for who they are.

It began when the children noticed that I was watching them.  Children are always looking to make connections and form relationships.  They reciprocated immediately.  It was then my turn to reciprocate.  By the way, often times it works in reverse: a child initiates and I reciprocate. 

There are two things to notice about the picture.  First, I was down on their level.  There is really no other way to understand the children's perspective of the world.  A colleague once related a story of a little girl who kept telling the teacher to look at the bunny in the snow.  The teacher could not see it no matter how hard she tried.  The child was insistent and finally the teacher bent down to see what the child was pointing at.  It was only then she saw what the child saw: the snow had drifted into the shape of a rabbit.  The teacher was so intent on seeing a real rabbit hiding in the bushes that she could not even imagine anything else until she looked from the child's physical perspective.  The world from a child's perspective is full of surprise and wonders.  How often do we miss those surprises and wonders because we do not take time to get down on their level?   How often do we fail to show respect for the children by not validating their perspective?

The second thing to notice is that we were focused on each other.  Our actions were our shared language even without words. That was doubly true in this instance because I did not speak Spanish and they did not speak English.  All our communication was non verbal.  There was no script to our interactions, so we made it up as we went along.   We were living in the moment: both sides initiating and responding; both sides reading each other's cues. 

When I build an apparatus for the sensory table, I use it as a provocation to prompt a dialogue.  For the most part, I am interested in the dialogue between the children and the materials.  Ideally, the apparatus is inviting and rich in possibilities.  There is no script to follow.  Rather, the children bring their own set of abilities, interests and ideas to the table---literally.  My job is to notice.  In noticing and recognizing the context of their interactions, I, myself enter the dialogue.  For the most part, I am not playing with them or the apparatus; I do not try to guide or direct their explorations.  Rather, I am there to bear witness to their ideas in action; I am there to understand their perspective and all the surprises and wonders that ensue; I am there to show how much I respect their thinking.   Though I am always trying to put words to what children are doing, I can't stress enough how much the reciprocal dialogues depend more on actions than on words.

One last point about what the picture says to me.  The act of giving flowers is an excellent metaphor for the beauty all children have to offer if we are primed to notice their cues, prepared to receive them, and ready to reciprocate in kind.  And, if we are able to take their perspective, we are more likely to appreciate and value that beauty.

Scientific inquiry

I just finished doing a session at our annual state early childhood conference.  The session was on children's scientific inquiry at the water table.  Seeing the descriptions of other sessions on scientific inquiry and looking at the science curricula offered by numerous vendors (think STEM/STEAM), an age-old question of mine resurfaced: What constitutes science and scientific inquiry in an early childhood classroom? 

What I saw most often were science experiments that were planned and set up by the teacher to teach a scientific concept. The experiments varied in terms of how much the children participated and how much they observed.  They also varied in terms of opportunities for further inquiry.  Much of the time, the experiments were chosen for their dynamic effect, often bordering on magic.  Of course the idea was to have children think that science is cool and exciting.

To understand what constitutes science in early childhood education, I would like to invite you into a space of inquiry.  This is not quiz for which there is one "right" answer.   In this space, we are looking for ideas and perspectives that will shed some light on how children see and do science in the early years.

To invite you into that space of inquiry, I will present a video of children playing around the apparatus at the sand table that is pictured below.

The video clip focuses on the children's actions as they try to move the sand through just one of the cardboard chutes.

After viewing the clip, I will pose a couple of questions that will hopefully encourage a dialogue about science for young children.  Here goes.


Tapping the chute from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

What assumptions do you have about what constitutes science education for young children?

How does this episode confirm or not confirm your assumptions?

Feel free to comment---or not.  And again, I am not looking for a "right" answer.  I am interested in how others in the field think about the nature of scientific inquiry for young children and what can it look like in the classroom. 

Just to let you know, my son is a scientist and he does scientific experiments as a job.  For him, a scientific experiment consists of isolating and controlling variables to find out as clearly as possible cause and effect.  The process is clearly defined and so is the expected outcome. When I show him an episode like this, we always discuss whether the children are playing or doing science.

Thank you in advance for joining the conversation.