Balance

Scott McCredie in his book Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense calls balance the sixth sense.  For the most part, we take it for granted not realizing that it affects everything we do.  It operates subconsciously in real time.  Balance is a moving target, never static, because we are always moving and making complex but subtle adjustments to stay upright.  Gill Connell and Cheryl McCarthy in their book A Moving Child is a Learning Child state: "It[balance] must be learned. And the only way to learn balance is through movement---all different kinds of movement experienced many times in many varied ways."(p. 84).

How can that happen in an early childhood classroom?  I actually think it can and should happen all throughout an early childhood classroom.  Instead of looking for examples throughout the room, however, I would like to examine different balancing strategies children employ at the sand and water table around just one apparatus.  I could choose almost any apparatus I have built, but I will choose one of my favorites from 2013 I call tall cardboard tubes and ropes.  

 

In the picture below, the child uses her torso, arms and chin propped against the table itself to keep her balance as she scoops the pellets to fill her metal bowl. 

That type of balancing is quite common, even for adults.  For example. we often lean up against a counter top when we cook.

Below is another way to use the table to perform a more dynamic balancing operation.  The child balances on the lip of the table on his abdomen.

He is able to do that because he bends his knees so his feet move toward the center of gravity closer to his abdominal balancing point.  In addition, he grabs the lip of the table with his left hand for greater stability.  This balancing operation allows him to reach further into the table to scoop pellets with his metal measuring cup.

In the photo below, the child in the lavender shirt is not leaning up against the table for balance.  Rather, she leans over and into the table, but she extends her backside away from the table for counter balance.

Her balancing looks a bit strained.  One reason for that is she grabs the lip of the bucket to help balance.  However, the bucket hangs on the rope by a S hook so it sways with very little force.  Is she steadying herself with her left hand at the same time she tries to steady the bucket?  
 

Below is another nice bit of balancing by a child.  This child is pouring pellets from his metal pot into the top of one of the cardboard tubes.   To do that, he steps up onto the stool, stands on his tip toes, reaches up as high as he can and deposits the pellets into the top of the tube.

This child performs a little different type of balance.  This balance is on a vertical with a fairly narrow base comprised of his tip toes.  Besides the fact that he is doing an operation fully extended and over his head, this balancing requires the child to stay balanced as he hastily pours his pellets. He uses his left hand to grab a hole in the tube to steady himself, but that does not take away from the vertical nature of his balancing act.
 

In the photo below, the child is balancing using the thin ropes threaded through some of the holes in one of the cardboard tubes.

This child leans back as he pulls on the ropes.  If he were to let go, or if the rope would break, or if the heavily duct taped tube broke free of the table (highly unlikely), the child would fall backwards.  In essence, he balancing on a thread.  However, the thread does not stop him from swinging back and forth.  Rather, he uses his knees against the red tub to keep him from tipping over sideways.
 

Here is one more example of a child performing a balancing act on the apparatus.  The child stands on the thin lip of the table almost like a tight rope walker with her body straight and her arms out to the side.  She even splays the fingers on her left hand to help her balance.

She does hold the top of the one of the tubes to aid in balancing, but the look on her face makes me think she is ready to let go of the tube to demonstrate her acrobatic balancing skills.

I have only given a few examples around one apparatus.  Believe me, their are so many more.  And with each new apparatus, the children find new ways to test their balance.  I contend that if we look closely enough, the children  are constantly finding ways throughout the classroom to challenge and fine tune their ability to balance physically, socially and psychologically .  Just maybe being off balance is important for all learning---metaphorically speaking.

Gifts and gratitude

I have over 25,000 images of children in the classroom from my work as an early childhood educator.  Even though I am retired, I am still able to revisit life in the classroom through those images.  Recently I was thinking about how those images testified to the fact that the children offered me gifts every day.  Those gifts often came in the form of attention and engagement to what I offered to them in terms of classroom setup, materials and provocations.  However, those gifts were as unique as each child.  Follow me around the classroom to find just a few examples of those gifts.

Below is a photo of a child who crawled inside a big box next to the sensory table.  He used the small blue pail to plug the cardboard tube.  When the children at the top of the tube indicated that the tube was full, the child in the box pulled the pail from the bottom of the tube and watched the pellets drain into the box.

The gift this child offered me was a gift of wonder, the wonder of experiencing how his actions of plugging and unplugging generated a gush of pellets.  

In the picture below, two children were playing basketball in the large muscle area of the room.  I purposefully set out the steps to add a challenge their sport.

 

Their gift to me was a gift of engagement.  They took my offer of steps with the basketball hoop to more fully engage their bodies.  The endeavor became much more than just shooting a basket.  By engaging with the steps, it encompassed climbing, jumping, reaching, shooting, flying and landing. 
 

The children pictured below were also in the large muscle area.  They were playing their own made-up game of basketball. The child sitting on the ledge held the basket above his head as the others attempted to throw the balls into the basket.  The child holding the basket kept moving the basket so it was not so easy to make a basket.

The gift here was a gift of creativity.  These children created an original game that included an unique challenge of a moving target.
 

In the photo below, the children found a bin of small tree cookies on the manipulative shelf.  They proceeded to build a structure using all the tree cookies.  Since the tree cookies were irregular in size and shape, the children were forced to make many minute adjustments to get all the tree cookies to balance.

The gift here was one of executing a shared idea.   The attention to each other's moves made the balancing and building possible.  The shared idea was not the tower of tree cookies but an active idea of how to proceed step by step.

In the picture below, the child drew a picture from a photograph on the wall of a block structure he had built the week before.  He did his drawing on a white board that I held for him.

The gift here was one of noticing.  He paid careful attention to the photograph of his previous block structure so he could recreate it on the white board.

The picture below was taken in the block area.  In the photo the child put together a large floor puzzle of a tiger.  After completing the puzzle, he used blocks to outline the puzzle.

The gift here was one of original thinking.  The child decided to combine two completely different materials in a unique way to create an original work.
 

The photo below was taken at the writing table.  The child used the plasticine and wire that was provided to make a rainbow.

The gift here was one of bringing her best thinking to her undertaking.  Her best thinking included using her hands to make the wire bows for the rainbow arcs and to embed them in the plasticine. 

The picture below was taken in the housekeeping area.  The child appropriated all the scarfs to accessorize his outfit.

The gift here was one of unbridled experimentation.  The child was able to put a scarf on his head, around his neck and around his waist.  Where did the fourth one go?
 

In the photo below, a child used the window as a vertical platform to create a stained glass with window blocks. 

The gift here was her tacit insight that she had license to transform the classroom.  That is all the more impressive because the child also knew she could stand on the ledge , which was three feet off the ground, in order to complete her masterpiece. 

Though the children did not think they were giving me gifts, they were teaching me to see the world through ever new and ingenious ways.  They were my best teachers who never stopped offering their unique gifts.  For that I am eternally grateful.

The life of a dead tree trunk in the classroom

In a way, this post is a sequel to my previous post about the possibilities for play in a provocation I called the Swamp. The environment helped determine the possibilities.  And by environment, I meant the process of setting up the provocation by me; I meant the children and the curiosity and imagination they brought to their investigations; and I meant the materials themselves which begged to be explored.

This post is an experiment to see how the possibilities of play unfolded when just one of the materials offered to the children got placed in other parts of the room.  The object and its potential I would like to examine is the a piece of tree trunk from a tree I cut down in my yard.

As part of the swamp, the tree trunk was a loose part that could be used as a place where some of the plastic animals could find a home. (If you look closely in the picture above, there is a plastic grasshopper on the tree trunk.)

And because it was a loose part, it did not have to stay in the table.  In the picture below, the child lifted the tree trunk out of the table and was about to drop it on the floor. 

In a way, he was deconstructing the swamp by piling the pieces of wood on the floor.  But at the same time, he was constructing his own collection of wood by using the floor as an open platform to pile.

After the swamp, I moved the tree trunk to the housekeeping area to see how the children would use it in their play and explorations.   I placed it on the shelf by the window and by some living plants.
 

In the picture above, the child noticed that the tree trunk had a hole in it.  She found a stick from the bowl of sticks on the bottom shelf and used it to explore the hole.  By the way, the hole was a entrance to an old bird nest so it was worth exploring.

One child took the tree trunk off the shelf to put it on the floor where he proceeded to dislodge a piece that had rotted and become weak. 

I noticed that the child found the work gloves in the house area to add a little authenticity to his deconstruction operation.

I subsequently moved the tree trunk to the writing table as a provocation with other Fall elements like gourds and corn.  The children found many more ways to explore and examine this natural element.

 

For example, the child pictured below examined the bottom of the tree trunk.  That way she was better able to see that the hole was bigger on the inside where the nest had been.

For another example, the child below found a different way to examine the hole in the tree trunk.  He used one of the ears of the Fall corn to "measure" the size of the hole.

A good question is: Did any of the children draw the tree trunk?  I do not know and since these pictures were taken more than five years ago, I do not even remember.  However, one of more stunning pictures I took was a picture of a child showing his mother the picture of the girl examining the bottom of the stump.

This was the same child who had used the Fall corn to explore the hole in the top of the tree trunk.  In other words, the documentation from the week before triggered a memory, a memory that he could share with his mother about his own interaction with the tree trunk.

This was actually an enjoyable reflection for me.   I remembered that I had brought in a tree trunk into the room to add to the swamp and I remembered that I had moved around the room.  However, I had not realized how this dried up piece of wood spawned so much engagement by the children in multiple areas of the room, whether that engagement was with the piece itself or in concert with other objects.  The quintessential point was that this was a narrative about just one object in a sea of objects in my early childhood classroom.  As it moved, so did the narrative.  And it was not lost on me that this dried up piece of wood was basically waste wood not even good enough for firewood.  Leave it to the children to bring it back to life and make multiple meanings out of it.

 

All play is local

All my adult life I have watched children play.  Even when I was not in a classroom, I paid attention to children's play whenever I was out and about.   To complement my observations of children's play, I have also read a bit about children's play.  For example, here are five generally agreed upon principles of play from the National Association for the Education of Young Children authored by Marcia L. Nell and Walter F. Drew:

        1) Children make their own decisions.

        2) Children are intrinsically motivated.

        3) Children become immersed in the moment.

        4) Play is spontaneous/non-scripted.

        5) Play is enjoyable.

These "essentials" by no means exhaust the definition of play but are meant to summarize some important characteristics of play.  However, for me, there has always been something lacking in these generally agreed upon characteristics of play. 

I was recently reading an interview with Vivian Gussin Paley in the Fall 2009 edition of the American Journal of Play in which she added a new characteristic of play that struck a chord with me and all she needed was four words: "Play is entirely local..." p. 128.

Let me see if I can explain why those four words add richness to the idea of children's play.  To do that, I will look back on a provocation I would set up every year in the Fall in my sensory table.  I called it the swamp.

The swamp usually consisted of Fall leaves, gourds, sticks, branches, stumps, rocks, pine cones, grass and plastic swamp-dwelling animals such as frogs, snakes and bugs.

I would add about an inch or two of water to the table because it just would not be a swamp without water.  The shelf next to the table offered various containers and kitchen utensils.

 

The child pictured on the left used her hands and eyes to examine one of the logs in the sensory table. What made this local?  First, the log was locally resourced.  I found it at the Mississippi River just a few blocks from my school.  Its shape and smoothness invited the child to handle it. Second, the child brought her own curiosity and desire to know more about this piece of wood that was unique as an object and unique as part of the sensory table.  She would be the only child that week to examine this piece of wood in such a way.  Local for her was her unique way of examining the piece of wood.

 

The child pictured on the right also examined a different piece of wood.  This log, too, was locally sourced: it was a section of a maple tree that I cut down in my front yard.  This child brought a different curiosity and desire to better know this piece of tree.  He wanted to test his strength by attempting to lift the log off the bottom of the table.  For this child what was local was his approach to better understand the physical properties of the log and the limits to his own capabilities in relation to the properties of the log.

 

The child on the left used yet a different piece of wood that came from the tree I cut down in my yard.  He was actually attempting to balance the three-part branch on top of a long log taped between the two sensory tables.  For this child what was local was his attempt to bring two separate pieces of the tree into a balancing relationship. 

The child on the right used smaller sticks across a larger branch to make a home for a bug.  The sticks again came from my walks by the river and the larger branch from the tree I cut down in my yard.  The leaves and grass he used to complete the roof were from my yard.  For this child the local was the knowledge he brought to the encounter around building a home for the bug.  

 

The child on the left used the largest log in the table as a platform to create a frog world.  The log again came from the tree I cut down.  However, the frogs were plastic and not locally resourced; they were bought.  What was local for this child was her ability to use the log as a platform to animate the frogs in a way that utilized her own unique imagination to create novel relationships between objects and herself.

For me, play in the classroom was an extremely complex concept.  In fact, I eschewed trying to define it.  Instead, I spent more time creating the conditions for play.  My own play with the materials, which must be included in the conditions for play, was an invisible part of the children's play.  The properties of the materials themselves offered the children possibilities for play that matched their burgeoning imaginations.  And each child---and combination of children---not only brought imagination to the conditions of play, but they also brought a certain amount of unique knowledge to bear on the conditions of play.  The phrase "all play is local"encompassed all conditions---past, present and future---in the immediacy of each and every moment of play. 

Postscript to picture of the year

I am revisiting the play episode with my grandson from my previous post entitled "picture of the year."  The reason I have done that is because it has raised questions for me about the nature of play trajectories.  I have added those questions as a postscript at the end of the original post.   If you have already read the original post, you can skip to the end to find the postscript.

Every year I designate a photo my picture of the year.  It has been a strange year to say the least.  A strange year deserves an offbeat picture of the year.  As a consequence, a photo of a humble, empty oatmeal box is my choice for my picture of the year.

For an early childhood blogger, that would truly seem to be a peculiar or mystifying picture of the year, so let me tell you why I chose this image.

The story begins in November, November 19th to be exact.  That was the date of my grandson's birthday.  He received a couple of nerf guns as presents.  A few days later, he came over to our house to show us one of his nerf guns.  Of course, to show us his new nerf gun, he had to show us how it worked.  In showing us how it worked, he haphazardly shot the gun all over the living room.   

I have no problem with toy guns.  As a child, I played with squirt guns and cap guns on a regular basis.  However, I was not in favor of the scatter-shot nature of my grandson's play in the living room.  I suggested that we needed a target to shoot at.  We went down the basement and found an empty oatmeal box, actually six of them, that we thought would be great for target practice.

First, my grandson set them up in the shape of a pyramid: three on the bottom; two on the next level; and one on top.  We took turns trying to knock down all the boxes.  My grandson then began experimenting with arranging the boxes in different configurations such as stacking all the boxes vertically on top of one another.  Each new configuration presented new challenges for knocking down the boxes.

When it was time to put things away, I went down the basement stairs and asked my grandson to toss the oatmeal boxes down so I could put them away.  When he threw the first one down, on a whim, I threw it right back up to him.  What ensued was a raucous game of tossing the boxes up and down the basement stairs.  One of our objectives was to catch each other's throw.  At one point, my grandson asked to switch places.  Putting away the oatmeal boxes became joyful, rowdy fun that lasted more than 15 minutes. 

The play with the nerf gun may have been the starting point of my play with my grandson, but the play with the oatmeal boxes became more compelling and vital.  Instead of trying to analyze why that happened, I am left with the thought that an empty oatmeal box in the hands of a child---and sometimes, an adult---offers unlimited possibilities for play trajectories.  And that is why the photo of humble, empty oatmeal box is my "picture of the year."

Happy New Year.  May the new year be filled with many unexpected and unpredictable play trajectories that bring some sparks of joy into your life. 

 

POSTSCRIPT:

I have been thinking about this play episode with my grandson.  For me, many questions remain about how the flow seemed to be seamless with multiple tangents.  For instance, why did my grandson accept my suggestion to search for a target instead of just continuing with his scatter-shot approach to demonstrating the power of his new nerf gun?  Was it because he welcomed the idea of a more focused action?  Did he sense that his scatter-shot approach would be shut down because it was uncertain what was an acceptable target? 

What happened after we chose a target also raised several questions for me.  Why didn’t we just settle on one configuration of the oatmeal boxes for target practice?  After we knocked down one configuration, why did my grandson continually construct different configurations?  And why, with each new configuration did he feel the need to make up rules about what constituted a hit?  For example, was knocking over the box better than just hitting the box?  Did the need to define a hit declare his need to keep score?  And what is it about target practice that made him want to keep score?

What happened for our cleanup operations also raised several questions for me.  Why did I throw the first oatmeal box back up the stairs?  My grandson and I do have a habit of playing catch and even playing catch up and down sets of stairs, but that has always been with a ball.  Was this just a way to keep our play going?  And why did this play again take on a competitive nature?  We did not keep score who caught how many boxes, but we did experiment with throwing the boxes harder or higher or bouncing them off the steps to make the other person miss.  Was the competition important for keeping this trajectory of play going?  Were we also competing to see who could come up with the most unique way to throw the box? 

Even though I cannot answer my own questions, I have used this reflective exercise in good faith. What I see is that there are moments during play when multiple possibilities present themselves.  The decision to explore one possibility over others is made in those moments.  That may not mean that the other possibilities are lost.  There is always the possibility that we will again throw oatmeal boxes up and down the basement stairs, but if we do, it will never be the same as this first time. That is because genuine play trajectories unfold moment by moment; they are expansive rather than restrictive.  They are often unpredictable, full of surprises and full of joy. 

Picture of the year

Every year I designate a photo my picture of the year.  It has been a strange year to say the least.  A strange year deserves an offbeat picture of the year.  As a consequence, a photo of a humble, empty oatmeal box is my choice for my picture of the year.

For an early childhood blogger, that would truly seem to be a peculiar or mystifying picture of the year, so let me tell you why I chose this image.

The story begins in November, November 19th to be exact.  That was the date of my grandson's birthday.  He received a couple of nerf guns as presents.  A few days later, he came over to our house to show us one of his nerf guns.  Of course, to show us his new nerf gun, he had to show us how it worked.  In showing us how it worked, he haphazardly shot the gun all over the living room.   

I have no problem with toy guns.  As a child, I played with squirt guns and cap guns on a regular basis.  However, I was not in favor of the scatter-shot nature of my grandson's play in the living room.  I suggested that we needed a target to shoot at.  We went down the basement and found an empty oatmeal box, actually six of them, that we thought would be great for target practice.

First, my grandson set them up in the shape of a pyramid: three on the bottom; two on the next level; and one on top.  We took turns trying to knock down all the boxes.  My grandson then began experimenting with arranging the boxes in different configurations such as stacking all the boxes vertically on top of one another.  Each new configuration presented new challenges for knocking down the boxes.

When it was time to put things away, I went down the basement stairs and asked my grandson to toss the oatmeal boxes down so I could put them away.  When he threw the first one down, on a whim, I threw it right back up to him.  What ensued was a raucous game of tossing the boxes up and down the basement stairs.  One of our objectives was to catch each other's throw.  At one point, my grandson asked to switch places.  Putting away the oatmeal boxes became joyful, rowdy fun that lasted more than 15 minutes. 

The play with the nerf gun may have been the starting point of my play with my grandson, but the play with the oatmeal boxes became more compelling and vital.  Instead of trying to analyze why that happened, I am left with the thought that an empty oatmeal box in the hands of a child---and sometimes, an adult---offers unlimited possibilities for play trajectories.  And that is why the photo of humble, empty oatmeal box is my "picture of the year."

Happy New Year.  May the new year be filled with many unexpected and unpredictable play trajectories that bring some sparks of joy into your life.