THE BIG BOXES MIGRATED TO THE SENSORY TABLE

Over the course of three weeks, I set up a box structure in the large muscle area of my classroom.  There were five boxes that had multiple openings into and out of the structure.  There were windows on the top and side so the children could check on the action outside of the boxes. Within the structures, there were more openings so the children could move between the boxes. All the boxes were taped together to make one large structure.  I called it the Big Box Fort.

After three weeks, I took the three largest boxes and moved them to the sensory table. I purposefully decided to attach the boxes around the outside of the table because I had never done that before.  I also wanted to create interesting spaces that would invite children to play at the table both inside and outside of the boxes.

In trying to decide where to position the boxes, I had fun placing the boxes at different locations and orientations around the table.  Finally,  I set boxes 1 and 3 on the vertical and box 2 on the horizontal.  Box 3 stands alone at one end of the table.  Box 1 is also on one end.  Box 3 is attached to one side in such a way that it overlaps box 1.  Where boxes 1 and 3 overlap, they are connected by an opening.

That allows the children to work in separate boxes or to move between the boxes in their play.

With any number of ways to arrange the boxes, why did I end up with this arrangement?  The one thing I knew I wanted was to connect at least two of the boxes so the children could move between boxes without having to come out of the structure.  After that, it was the interaction between myself and the boxes on that given day.  I am sure on another day, it would have come out differently.  Isn't that what play is all about?   

I cut holes in the sides of the boxes using the height of the table for the bottom cut.  That allowed me to tape the boxes securely to the lip of the table.

Just think for a second what kind of spaces are created by this structure.  First, there is the open space on the side of the table where there are no boxes.

There is another open space, the open space between boxes.

There are, of course, the spaces inside the boxes.

There is also a sort of hybrid space that is both inside and outside.

By far, this was the most popular type of play within this apparatus.  Children would enter the boxes and then lean out to play in the table.

I expected children to pour the pellets into the boxes.  Very rarely did they do that.  When they did, I had a bucket handy and was able to tell them to Put it in the Bucket.

Axiom #1 on the right-hand column of this blog states that children need to transport what is in the table out of the table.   

As you can see, this child has gathered a bunch of containers and placed them on the floor of the horizontal box.  She is busy filling those containers with the pellets and the sticks that she is transporting from the sensory table into the box.  (Many of her containers are overflowing, but the box does a nice job of containment.)  All-in-all, she is both focused and highly industrious.

  

A structure like this opens up many opportunities to play with different ways and means of transporting.  And if the children are able to constructively transport, the operations they formulate are productive and astounding.

TORNADO

I write almost exclusively about play around the sand and water table.  Last week, though, I wrote about a structure I set up in the large muscle area of my classroom.  I called it the Big Box Fort.

This was an installation that started off as three boxes but over the course of three weeks expanded to include five boxes and a periscope.  

There was one particular play scenario associated with this structure that totally surprised me. One child took to crashing into the outside of Box 1 and said she was a tornado.  

Tornado from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

We live in the Midwest part of the United States and every year in the summer we hear about tornados.  Tornado season, though, is over for us, so where does this scenario come from?  It seems to come out of the blue, but if you work around children, you know they are always trying to make sense of their world.  I asked her dad if he had any idea where her idea came from.  He said he did not have a clue.

From the video, we do know that the child has an idea about what a tornado does: it crashes into structures and tries to knock them down.  For her it is truly a full body experiment to crash against the wall of the box.  For her it is about the power of her body against the box.  But why does she become a tornado?

What is also surprising is that the children in the box pick up on the tornado scenario. Heads pop up yelling "tornado!" and "get out, it's a tornado!"  And everyone knows to get into the boxes when the tornado is coming.  That even includes the girl who is the tornado.  She, too, reassumes her role as a person and scurries into the box to seek shelter from the tornado. (Did you notice, this is an all-girl, big-body play scenario?)

Surely there is a lot of drama as the children play "tornado."  There is a lot of yelling and acting scared and hiding from the danger.  Those are all elements that seem to make the play infectious. But why a tornado?   

If it had something to do with the structure itself, I do not know.  However, the tornado play continued the following week when the box structure was no longer in the large muscle area. Instead, the children---some of the same children and some new players---made up a new script for the tornado game.  Interestingly enough, the girl who personified the original tornado was not part of this reconfigured group. This reconfigured group of children which now included both girls and boys decided to build a wall to keep out the tornado.  They built the wall in the window with the window blocks.

This was all very serious work.  One of the children even states that we have to get the wall built before the tornado destroys the whole world.  

Just this morning at a conference I was attending in New York, I heard Lella Gandini say: "Nothing is banal to the eyes of a child."  Surely this was important for this group of children.  But why did this play scenario about a tornado stick?  How did the play transform from someone embodying the tornado to a generalized, amorphous threat?  And will it continue to have a life in the classroom? 

Why the tornado?  

BIG BOX FORT

I write almost exclusively about life around the sand and water table in my classroom.  Permit me to deviate to show you what transpired in my large muscle area a few weeks ago.  Believe it or not, it has to do with cardboard boxes and duct tape.

I have dedicated a 6' X 12' area in my room for large muscle play so that type of play is always available to the children.  I change the area every two weeks so children work on all types of motor---and social---development.

Here are two examples.  On the left are Stepping Stones and on the right are trampolines.  The Stepping Stones accommodate many children and foster many types of group play.  The trampolines do not accommodate so many children but do foster turn-taking.


A few weeks ago, a program in another part of our building received some new toy shelves that came in big boxes.  Since everybody in the building knows I love boxes, they offered them to me. I gladly accepted and proceeded to set them up in the large muscle area.  Over the course of three weeks, I strung five big boxes together.  (There are six if you count the periscope box that allows the children to peek into box 4 and vice versa.)

I started with boxes 1, 2 and 3.  I decided to orient them horizontally.  I was afraid if I oriented them vertically, they would be unstable and could be prone to tipping.

For the first three boxes, only doors are on the sides and ends and only windows are on the top.  I will be totally truthful: I did not do that consciously.  The result, though, was fantastic.  To enter the boxes, the children had to get down on their hands and knees to crawl in.  That meant they were horizontal.

When the children went vertical, their heads popped out.






When I added box 4, I cut a window on the side of the box.  Notice it is at the same level as the top of the horizontal boxes.  This was a conscious decision because I did want the children to be able to look out of the vertical box.  (I no longer needed to worry about the vertical box tipping because it was duct taped to the other boxes.)

On the inside, I connected the boxes with doorways and windows so the children could crawl and climb through and between the boxes.  I taped the openings together so the boxes were all connected giving the whole structure a lot of stability.






One of the great features of the "fort" was that it provided enclosed spaces where the children could be away from the adults.

Maybe that is something they need and crave.

Whether or not they need or crave spaces away from adults, they are masters at exploring the spaces offered to them.  Below you can see a video of the children crawling in and out of the boxes.  Notice the child on the left tries to negotiate his way into that box with a child who seems to be the gatekeeper.  In the middle box, one child enters and then two different children exit.

In the box, out of the box from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

What you did not see were the three different children exiting the boxes from the right.  That makes at least eight children in the boxes.  How many more were there?  I do not know.  It is, after all, their space to be away from the adults.

There was clearly a lot of large motor activity in the last clip.  What was harder to see was the nonverbal negotiation of space that was happening inside the boxes.  You got a glimpse of it as the child negotiated his way into the box on the left.

That is just one type of social interaction fostered by the fort.  There were plenty more, but let's look at one more. The video shows children creating a little game of referencing each other as their heads pop in and out of the boxes.  

Heads up, heads down from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

You may have heard me chuckle during the clip.  I have shared the video with the parents and some colleagues and inevitably the video elicits smiles all around.

This little game the children created turned out to be significant.  The two girls had played together before, but the boy was not part of their play.  The following class, all three sought each other out for play.  

It now becomes very interesting to consider how the features of a structure and the children's actions combine to foster relationships.  And will those relationships be sustained over time?  Will new structures with different features change the relationships as the children act upon them?  If they do change, then in what way will they change?