The art of noticing

I am reading the book The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.  The book is a Posthuman feminist anthropological study of the many worlds that encompass the matsutake mushroom: the most valuable mushroom in the world.  Chapter 1 of the book is entitled "The Arts of Noticing."  In the chapter, the author makes several points that resonate with me.  Here are a couple that I take liberties in paraphrasing: 

                # We tend to see things through our adult/fettered imagination.

                # Pay attention to the unruly edges.

When I think about children, I see them as masters of the art of noticing.  First of all, their imagination is not fettered and secondly, they are always exploring the unruly edges of their environment.              

By way of example, I can look at the children's actions around an apparatus I call the sand cascade. The apparatus consists of a large box rising vertically from the table.  Embedded at an angle through the large box is a long narrow box with a hole at the top.  When children pour sand in the hole, it exists at the bottom into the tub at the end of the table.  The children cannot see the sand traveling through this box because it is a closed chute.

A second, narrow box is taped on top of the long embedded box.  Because this chute is open, the children can follow the sand flowing down and out from this box.

In the picture below, two three-year-olds pour sand down the open chute and watch it fall into the bucket in the tub next to the table.

If you click on the following link, you can see the video of these two pouring sand down the chute: https://vimeo.com/485607849

Of course, with my adult/fettered imagination that is exactly what I expect.  I can imagine the children pouring faster or slower; I can imagine them using larger or smaller containers from which to pour; I can even imagine children down at the bottom catching the sand.  

I could also imagine children discovering the top hole of the embedded box for their operations.

In hindsight, I could not have imagined a child noticing the leakage of sand from underneath the top chute.  

Nor could I have imagined a child finding the leakage from the bottom corner of the large box rising vertically from the table.  

In both instances, the noticing leads to the children's actions of catching the sand from the unexpected streams of sand coming from two different features of the apparatus.  In turn, their actions cultivate their ability to focus their observations about some properties of the sand and some fairly inconspicuous features (the leakages) of the apparatus.  Thus, the noticing leads to actions which lead to focused observations.  What is significant in these two cases is that the noticing happens on the unruly edges of the apparatus.  

To better understand children and their worlds, we need to look at their worlds through their eyes.  So often we try to encourage children to focus on what we think is important.  Instead, we might try to open our fettered imagination to see what else is going on.  In the book The Art of Scientific Investigation, W. I. B. Beveridge validates this idea when he asserts the following: "We need to train our powers of observation to cultivate that attitude of mind of being constantly on the look-out for the unexpected and make a habit of examining every clue that chance presents." (p. 32).  In other words, we need to pay attention to the "unruly edges" of children's actions to respect their acute art of noticing.