Fail

In the last two months, I have given four presentations to different groups of early childhood educators.  Whenever I give those talks, people often ask me: How did I start building things for the sensory table?  Sometimes people get right back to me to proudly show me what they built and how the children used it.  Sometimes, though, I hear from someone who has tried to build but for some reason their construction failed.

I started simply so my first bit of advice for anyone who wants to build is to start with simple constructions.  Here are two: a wooden tray and a box tower.

The first construction I ever made was a wooden tray cobbled together with scrap wood from my basement. 

This wooden tray spanned the width of the table and offered the children another level on which to work (see axiom # 3 on the right hand column of this blog).  In this setup, the extra level created a platform/counter above the table for children to put their Moon Sand creations.

Another apparatus that was simple and that I built early on was a box tower.  I simply embedded a vertical box into a wider, base box. 

Not only did this structure offer the children different levels to work on, it provided them with lots of holes for their operations (See axiom #5).  In addition, this construction promoted spacial literacy by creating spaces over, under, around and through (See axiom # 2).

The second bit of advice I would give anyone who wants to build is to embrace failure.  When I give talks, people only see what works.  There were plenty of times a construction did not work as planned.  Sometimes that was OK and sometimes that was not OK.  Usually when something was not OK, there was a design flaw.  Here is a cool looking one---at least from my perspective---that did not work very well.  I called it vertical tubes between boxes.

I connected two boxes using cardboard tubes.  I embedded the tubes in both the boxes.  The bottom box was the base that I taped securely to the bottom of the table.  I wanted to invite the children to pour feed corn down the tubes.  I cut notches in the tubes so the corn would exit the tube on top of the base box, which also give the apparatus an aural component.  So where was the failure?

The failure was in the design.  Because the top box was almost as wide as the width of the table, a lot of the feed corn ended up on the floor.  That was not the children's fault; they were just learning to pour so, of course, they spilled.  They spilled moving the corn from the table up and around the top box and then they spilled when they tried to pour corn down a tube.  As they missed the holes on top, a lot of corn ended up on top creating an invitation for the children to bush the corn off the top---right onto the floor.  Mind you, it was not a failure from the children's perspective, only from my perspective because of the amount of mess.

Interestingly, I usually was able to modify an apparatus soon after I saw what I consider a flaw in the design.  With this particular apparatus, I could not figure out how to modify it so there would not be so-o-o-o-o much spilling.  After a week, I took it down and never made it again.

I still think this was a cool apparatus.  To me it was a small sculpture or model for a piece of architecture.

Here's a question for you.  If you were me, how could you have modified this apparatus to eliminate the design flaw?


 

Thanks a million

According to google analytics, my blog reached one million page views on Thursday.

How did that happen?  I am not sure, but there are a few people I need to thank that helped to make that happen.

The first person I need to thank is Lani Shapiro, a colleague and a mentor.  I remember the very first time I showed Lani a video I had taken of children playing at the sensory table.  I just thought it was a cool video.  When I showed it to her, she also thought it was a cool video.  But then she started to point out all the things that were going in the short video such as the three-year-olds actually taking turns and how they were experimenting with hydraulic flow and that they were doing all this without any teacher direction.   From that moment on, I kept showing her videos and she kept helping me understand truly how capable young children are in directing their own learning.

The second person I need to thank is Juliet Robertson, an early years trainer in the UK of some renown for her work in outdoor education.  Juliet was an early follower of my blog and does an excellent job of taking some of the foundational ideas from the blog and applying them to outdoor settings  Three years ago when I floated the idea of doing presentations and workshops in the UK, she encouraged me and helped me get enough gigs.  For that, I am eternally grateful.  Juliet has a blog of her own and I encourage you to check it out: http://creativestarlearning.co.uk/blog/

The third and fourth people I need to thank are also from the UK.  Natalie Adamson was also an early follower of mine and was one of the first people to actually send me a picture of an apparatus that one of her teachers built that she said was inspired by my blog.  Gaenor Nokes and Natalie invited me to do a workshop at their new school.  They were so proud to show me a room they called the "tomsensori" room.  They said my work was their inspiration.  That have since really taken sensory play to a whole new level.  Make sure you check out their Facebook page because they are doing some amazing work: https://www.facebook.com/OdstockDayNursery/

The last person I want to thank is Alec Duncan from Australia.  Alec wrote to me to tell me that I should do a sand and water Facebook page and connect it to my blog.  He said he was giving me this advice because he thought the Facebook page would increase my readership.  He was right and I thank him for that.  Whenever he re-posts a blogpost of mine, I get a get a ton of hits from his followers on his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ChildsPlayMusicPerth/?pnref=about.overview

There are even more people I could thank like the local people I meet with on a regular basis to talk about early childhood practice or the the people in Ontario with whom I have corresponded with for several years, but I want to leave it at these five because they were most instrumental for my blog reaching one million views.

However, I would be remiss if I did not thank the thousands of children who entered my classroom through the years.  They have taught me everything I know about how children learn.  No two children were alike and they each challenged me to see beyond the t-shirts and the shoes to create a connection and relationship that honored who they were and who they were becoming on any given day.

Thanks a million.




https://www.facebook.com/OdstockDayNursery/

Cornered

Several years ago, there was a child who was hoarding all the cars at the sensory table.  Other children were trying to grab some vehicles away from him.  He was having none of that.  In fact he was making quite a raucous and screaming bloody murder.

At that time, I had a student teacher who was monitoring the sand table.  She approached the situation by telling the child that he had to share.  There was one problem: he was an English language learner early in his quest to master this new language.   As she approached him, he recoiled and squeezed the vehicles harder and closer to his body.  He also screamed louder.

Next, the teacher aide came over to help out.  The aide knew I never used the word share in my classroom because when an adult asks a child to share, he is basically asking the child to stop playing with what he is playing with and to give it to the child who is asking for it.  Needless to say, that is not sharing.  The aide used the strategy I often used.  She had the children who wanted a vehicle to ask the child for a car.  Then she asked the child hoarding the cars: "Which one can he have?"  In that way, the child would have some control over who gets which car.  However, there was still an implied assumption that he was expected to "share" the cars.  The result was that he screamed even harder and held the cars even tighter.

Nothing seemed to be working, so as the teacher, I figured I had to try to help restore a little calm to the sand table.  I remember getting up from the art table and actually wondering what I was going to do.  By the time I reached the sensory table, I saw four children yelling for cars from the child hoarding the vehicles.  When I looked at the child who had all the cars, I saw a mixture of fear, desperation and defiance as if his life depended on him keeping the cars.  In other words, he looked like an animal that had been cornered.

I made a split second decision to stand between the four children and the boy with the cars.  I actually nudged the little group to the other end of the sensory table and began to play a different activity with them that did not involve cars.  I kid you not, within 30 seconds the child with all the cars stopped his screaming, came out of his corner and started giving each child one of the cars he had been hoarding.  There was no need for me to stick around at that point because play resumed with everyone happily engaged.  And they all seemed to have gotten what they wanted.  The boy who had been hoarding got to play with the others partially on his own terms and the others all got cars. 

As a teacher, what did I learn from this episode? First, nobody likes to be cornered.  When a child is cornered, it is time to give him space.  Second, you cannot make a child be generous.  Rather, given half a chance, he can and will be generous of his own accord. 
 
Conflicts are an inevitable outgrowth of living, working and playing together.  Because they are inevitable, I do not view conflicts negatively.  Rather, conflicts are an opportunity to learn about how to get what you want and still get along with others.  When we do that in the classroom in a constructive way, children gain important life skills.


I am a featured presenter at the NAEYC annual conference in Atlanta.  I will be presenting my newest talk on children's scientific inquiry at the water table.  If you are attending the conference and would like to hear it, my presentation is on Saturday, November 18th from 11:00 - 12:15 in room A411 in the Georgia World Conference Center.  If you do come, make sure you stop by and say hello.  If you cannot make the session but would still like to meet---this is, after all, a great place and time to network---send me an email. 

Self-regulation at the sensory table

People have asked me how do I manage the number of children at the sensory table.  My answer has always been that I do not limit the number of children at the sensory table.  Given the chance, the children themselves manage numbers at the table quite well.  Sometimes, there will only be one child at the table.

And at other times, there will be a hoard of children occupying the whole space.  It is not unheard of to see as many as 10 at the sensory table.

With that many at the table, the children are literally shoulder-to-shoulder.  That means there is a lot of incidental contact as they play. So how do they manage?

One reason is that children's idea of personal space is much different than that of adults.   Take a look at this video I call "Close encounters."  Two boys are standing on the same stool, one literally on the back of the other,  pouring pellets down a tube.

Close Encounters from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

You might think these two are good friends who play together all the time, but that was not the case.  They were both so intent on what they were doing that personal space did not seem to matter.  Space matters, but not personal space.  Given the chance, the children negotiate space non-verbally with their bodies, which means that there can be a lot of physical contact without real conflict.  Too often as adults, we step in too soon to impose our idea of personal space on the children.  That short circuits their own ability to negotiate and accommodate to each others actions.

If the children are given the chance to negotiate and accommodate, they get to practice true self-regulation.   Take a look at his video in which three boys are taking turns pouring sand down the same tube. 


Taking turns from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

Taking turns for these boys was both a negotiation and accommodation and mostly non-verbal.  The child in red on the right was able to pour two scoops of sand down the tube before the other two even had a chance to pour one scoop down.  Was that fair?

Adults often try to impose turn taking on children when none is really needed.  We do that by limiting the number of children at the table or making sure every one gets their turn before anyone gets a second turn.  "Wait your turn" does not lead to children's self-regulation.  Self-regulation is a byproduct of children's own actions to negotiate and accommodate with others in the context of their play.


I am a featured presenter at the NAEYC annual conference in Atlanta.  I will be presenting my newest talk on children's scientific inquiry at the water table.  If you are attending the conference and would like to hear it, my presentation is on Saturday, November 18th from 11:00 - 12:15 in room A411 in the Georgia World Conference Center.  If you do come, make sure you stop by and say hello.  If you cannot make the session but would still like to meet---this is, after all, a great place and time to network---send me an email.