Making cookies

I am in Austin, Texas, this week for the NAEYC Professional Learning Institute.  On Monday, I did a session on children's scientific inquiry at the water table.

Below is one of the videos from that presentation.  The children were busy making suds from a giant sponge that covered the bottom of the water table.  One child filled an empty coffee can with suds.  She then slowly inserted a plastic bottle into the the coffee can.  In doing so, she displaced the suds from the coffee can.  One of the other children saw what she was doing and called it a suds fountain.  In addition to exploring the properties of suds, she was working with such things as volume and substance. 



One thing that has always intrigued me about this video is the chatter of the children as they explore and play.  A child asked: "Do you want me to give you some of my sponges?"  The child answers: "Yeh. I need a lot of sponges."  A third child asked: "To make cookies?"  To which the child answers: "Yeh. Chocolate cookies."

In trying to understand that simple dialogue, I asked my mentor and colleague, Lani Shapiro, to help me deconstruct what was important about the dialogue.  I thought the chatter gave the episode authenticity.  This was not a scripted dialogue.  It flowed naturally from child to child as they each did their own thing while still paying attention to what each other was doing.

As Lani pointed out, it was even more complex than that.  The child who collected sponges knew the sponges were not cookies.  However, he was using the sponges to represent cookies.  That is important because for children to be able to read, they need to have plenty of practice understanding how representation works.  To read, children need to understand that a mark represents a letter.  That a letter represents a sound.  That letters together represent a word.  That a word represents an object.  What about sentences?  What about paragraphs?

Talking about sponges being cookies can now be seen as a deep dive into pre-literacy.  It is not just about their talk; it is also about their own penchant to play with representation.  Of course that includes the words the children use in their dialogue, but it also includes the manipulation of the materials which encompasses the nonverbal work they do with their hands and bodies.

Given the time, space and materials, children know how to inhabit a space of learning.