Agency for children---and the teacher

This post will take me into uncharted territory.  Usually I write about an apparatus I have set up at the sensory table.  But the last couple of weeks I have been writing about the life of a cardboard box in the classroom.  In doing those posts, I began to think about my role in the classroom, and more generally, what type of agency does a teacher really have and how can others see it. 

There is a lot written about giving the children agency in the classroom.  How often do we really give children agency?  Do we really give children agency when we offer children choices so they will learn what we want them to learn?  Do we really give children agency when we work so hard for children to internalize our wants and desires so they see them as their own?  Do we really give children agency when we look for them to substantiate our world view?

Those are heady questions and not easily deconstructed.  One of the ways to deconstruct those questions is to raise the question: What is the role of the teacher in the classroom?

I will try to answer that by moving to another part of the classroom: the large muscle area.  I have a large muscle area as defined by a 5' x 12' blue mat.  This area is always open during the hour and a half of unstructured play time in the classroom.  I chose this area because I think I can easily find an example of the interplay between children's agency and my own.

A couple times a year, I set up a wooden climber and slide on the large muscle mat.  I do that because I know children need to climb and slide---even indoors and even at times other than at gym or recess.  However, there are metal shelves at the end of the slide so I have to cover them with other blue mats so children do not bump into the metal shelves.

 

I'll let you in on a little secret: they never do anyway.  Instead, they liked to launch themselves into the mats from the slide.

 

The children also liked to take the mats to cover themselves for rollicking games of hide and seek.





In essence, these mats became two big loose parts in the large muscle area for the children appropriate for their own uses.  Needless to say, there were many, many uses, but here is one fetching example of how the children used the mats as loose parts.  Two children covered the slide with the two mats.  One child held them in place while the other stepped onto them to slide down.  It was slower than they or I expected.  At the end, she declared: "That's a nice boat ride."


That's a nice boat ride from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

Up to this point, my agency was setting up the invitation for large motor play.  When I saw that the children started to used the blue mats for their own purposes, I made a conscious decision to let them move the mats away from the metal cabinet because they were already regulating their own speed down the slide.  At that point, I became really curious how many different ways the children could use these mats.  That meant that I needed to take a step back to watch.  Not only was I going to watch, but I was also going to document how the children used the mats.

After watching how the children used the mats,  I decided that I could create a new invitation for play in the large muscle area by just setting out multiple mats.  I took away the climber and set out seven mats.  Now it was the children's turn to show their agency.  They did not disappoint.  They stacked them so they could jump.

They laid them all out on the big blue mat so they could pretend to go sleep on Christmas Eve only to wake up to see that Santa had left them presents.

Some of the children decided to try to build a fort with the mats to protect themselves from the bad guys.  As the video below shows, that was not so easy because the mats were flimsy and floppy and took quite a bit of effort to manipulate.


Mat fun from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

With the help of others, though, they eventually did create a decent looking---though quite unstable---fort.

I think it is easy to see the children's agency with the blue mats.  There manipulation of the mats both when the climber was up and when there was no climber was only limited by their imagination, both individual and group imagination. 

Where was my agency in all of this?   My agency can be clearly seen in the initial set up.  From there, though, I do not think it is so clear.  Was making the decision to let the children initially move the mats away from the metal shelves something that can be considered agency on my part?  Can observing and recording what they were doing be considered my agency.  What about the decision to create time and space for the large muscle play?  Can that be considered agency?  I think taking the children's lead by creating a new set up with just the mats surely showed agency on my part. 

If indeed all those things I mentioned fall under the rubric of my agency, I am struck by the realization of how much the children's agency and my agency are intertwined.  It is like a small game of soccer.  I kick the ball to them.  They receive it and dribble with it a bit, sometimes with moves I have never seen.  Then they kick it back to me in an unexpected way or direction that makes me have to shift my stance to receive and handle it.  Maybe I do a few dribbles, but then I kick it back to them in a way that gives them a chance to receive, dribble and kick in yet another new way.  Agency is not something I have or they have.  Instead, it is something that emerges in the context of the room between the materials, the children and myself.  It is not static, but ever changing.

Does that make any sense?

The life of a big box in the classroom...continued

Last week, I began a post that showed the life of a big box in the classroom.  That life began with a fort made from four big boxes set up in the large muscle area of the classroom.

The four boxes were then moved to the sensory table where they were arranged so there was a box on each end and a box on each side. 

After they were removed from the sensory table, one of the big boxes became an extra room in the housekeeping area.

A second big box became a cabinet for the light table to cut down on some of the fluorescent light radiating from the ceiling lights.

 

What happened to the other two big boxes?  Using a utility knife and an old paper cutter, they were cut into bases and shapes for the children to make cardboard sculptures. 

With over a hundred children making sculptures, the last two boxes were gone.  In fact I had to find more cardboard.  That was really not so difficult. 

As it turned out, though, we were not done with gluing cardboard.  I decided to follow the individual projects with a large group cardboard sculpture.  I rounded up some more cardboard---again, not so hard.  I laid out a provocation using a large piece of cardboard as the base.  I glued a long, narrow box in the middle to give the invitation a third dimension.  

This was a group project across eight different classes and over a hundred children.  As you can imagine, it just kept growing from one class to the next.

It grew organically up and out.  By the end, it was about 5 feet long, 2.5 feet wide and 2 feet high.  Interestingly, we had to move it each day because we used this same table for snack.  The top of the light table cabinet was were it resided when it wasn't on the table.  Yet, another use for the big box!

That took a week, but we were not finished.  Next we painted the sculpture.  Before the children painted the sculpture, I spray painted the whole thing with black spray paint.  I only offered two colors for painting the sculpture: lavender and pink.

As the week progressed, the sculpture was easily covered in paint.  In fact, near the end of the week, the children were painting over the paint and adding design elements such as dots and stripes.

This was our masterpiece.  I hung it in the hall for all to see.  Underneath the sculpture, I displayed six pictures to show how it evolved.   Parents and other staff in the building were duly impressed.

In a matter of three months, the cardboard boxes inspired a fort, a sensory apparatus, an extra room in the house area, a cabinet for the light table, and both an individual and a group cardboard sculpture.  In other words, the boxes served as provocations in the large muscle area, at the sensory table, in the dramatic play area, with the manipulatives at the light table, and at the art table.   Not bad for a material that costs nothing.

Did I say I loved cardboard boxes?

 

The life of a big box in the classroom

I like big boxes.  I try to set them up around the sensory table at least once a year.  This past school year at the end of February, I arranged four big wardrobe boxes around the sensory table.  They were arranged so there was one on each end of the table and one on each side of the table.

One of the reasons I like big boxes around the table is that it expands the table and creates inviting spaces that the children can inhabit while doing their operations.  Children can be in a box reaching out or they can be in the in-between spaces created by the boxes.

How does working inside a big box change how children approach their operations?  For one thing, children often kneel in the box as they do their operations because the window in the big box makes it a little more difficult to stand and work.  If a child stands, she has to bend her back and lean over the lip of the table.  Children do it, especially if they want to extend their reach, but kneeling is more comfortable.  How does a child in between the boxes experience the working space and how does that affect his operations or his relationships with others working inside the boxes? 

Before the boxes were set up around the sensory table, they were taped together on the large muscle mat in the classroom to make a box fort. 

The boxes were connected by inside doorways allowing the children to crawl in and through the boxes.  Holes and windows were cut in the top and sides for rousing games of peek- a-boo. 

The boxes had a life before they were set up at the sensory table and they also had a life after the sensory table.  One of the boxes was moved to the house area next to the books.  This became a room within the house.  It became a new place to for the baby to sleep.

 It was an exciting place to share with friends.

It was a place that could be moved just enough to create a new space in which to hide.

It was a place that could be re-oriented to be a superhero cave.

Another big box was re-purposed to be a capsule for the light table.  Three big holes were cut on three sides, but the side closest to the wall was not cut to give the box stability.

The idea was to block the fluorescent light coming from above so the table itself would seem brighter for the children's operations.

Besides making the table seem brighter, it also created the feeling of being inside a space and under a canopy.

It would seem that the life of these big boxes was a study in children's exploration of space.  They willingly and enthusiastically explored the spaces offered them.  Interestingly, though, their explorations of space were byproducts of the operations that they created and recreated within those spaces.

Wait, aren't there two more big boxes?

To be continued...

Guest post

I recently did a workshop for a nature preschool here in Minnesota.  I usually do get some immediate feedback after a workshop, but usually it is just a photo and a brief note about how the children took to the new apparatus they built for their sensory table.  However, this time, one of the participants sent me a detailed description of the children's exploration of their new sensory table apparatus and her own reflection on their explorations.  I asked her if I could use her observations and ruminations as a guest post.  She willingly agreed.  

By the way, Dani is quite a photographer in her own right.  Check out some of the beautiful images of nature she has captured on her web page:  http://daniporterborn.zenfolio.com

Thank you Dani. 

New Sensory Table Apparatus (inspired by workshop with Tom Bedard)

10/24/16

by Dani Porter Born, Dodge Nature Preschool

Materials: cardboard dividers; windows, doors, and holes cut into cardboard; pvc pipe, cardboard chute, and flexible accordion dryer tubes; scoops, bowls, cups, spoons, and other containers for transport; large bin outside of sensory tub; wood pellets.

During a professional development workshop with Tom Bedard, we learned more about his approach to working with young children at the sensory table and were given the opportunity to build a new apparatus for each of our classrooms. As teachers, some of us approached it with a bit of trepidation, maybe not being comfortable with the building process or materials, or not sure who should do what… perhaps a bit like children when approaching a new task. Once we actually got started, the ideas kept flowing and the excitement built. We were curious to see what the children would do, how they would use it, and what we would learn from them. Here are the observations I documented after watching two classes approach our new apparatus for the first time.

Exploration:

-Children transported pellets in and out of every container and hole, using everything they could find. “Look, I filled this all up!”

-While they explored, they asked questions such as, “What’s this for?” “What do we do with this?” Where will it go?” “What are these things?” I did not answer those questions, but encouraged the children to make their own choices.

-One child looked at the large bin that pellets were falling into outside of the sensory tub. He looked at me and stepped one foot into the bin. “Can I put my toes in?” When he saw that it was ok, he stepped all the way in, with bare feet. “It feels kind of dirty. Kind of bunchy.” Other children wanted to get in as well. We decided that two at a time would be manageable. One child really wanted to get in and was finding it especially hard to wait for his turn. I complimented him on his patience and asked if it was hard to wait. He nodded his head, yes, but continued to wait.

-A child picked up a longer pellet in broke it in two. “Look how easily they come apart, they separate.”

-A child picked up a short accordion tube and talked into it like a microphone, noticing how different his voice sounded.

 

  

Engineering and Problem Solving:

-One child noticed that pellets were not sliding down the chute and said, “What can we do?” Another child replied, “I have an idea.” She put her hand through a hole in the chute to push the pellets. A third child grabbed a spoon and pushed the pellets through. Yet another child reached up from the bottom of the chute to pull the pellets out.

-A child noticed a vertical tube above her head and wanted to get pellets into the tube but she couldn’t reach. I asked if she wanted something to stand on and gave her a hollow block. She reached as high as possible and stood on her tiptoes, then used a long-handled spoon, absolutely determined to get pellets into the tube.

-“How can we attach this?” (accordion tube onto the end of a chute where pellets fall into a second bin). One child matched the two ends together, then another held it in place while children pushed pellets through.

-A child stuck one end of the accordion tube over the top of a pole that is used as a brace. Another child looked at it and lifted a scoop of pellets up to pour them through, then realized he couldn’t because the top of the tube was over the pole. He turned and looked for another place to pour his pellets.

-A child discovered a funnel was clogged with wet pellets that had expanded and crumbled. “How do I get this out of here?” He went to find a pencil to clear the funnel and then used the funnel to catch pellets at the end of the chute, since the funnel was too small for pellets to move through.

 

 

Teamwork and Socialization:

-Two children picked up a flexible accordion tube and wondered what to do with it. One held it while the other spooned pellets into it. The first child looked inside and could see that some pellets were stuck. She shook it until the pellets fell out.

-Children peeked through windows, smiled, laughed, and exclaimed delightedly when they saw each other.

-They passed containers and pellets to each other through windows.

-Play at the sensory table included much conversation and body language about what the children were doing, how to share materials and how to negotiate space.

Reflection:

Watching the children use this new apparatus was fascinating. Because we planned for different levels, many spaces, and open-ended materials, the children were able to explore and use the sensory table in ways that seemed very satisfying to them. There was a lot of movement in and around the table and while many children were drawn to it, there were enough spaces to keep it from feeling too crowded.

The sensory table is a place that is filled with opportunities for problem solving, both for an individual child trying to figure out how to do something and for peers to figure out how to be in the same space. For the most part, the children were able to negotiate play with each other with little to no guidance from me. The play was so important that they wanted to be able to keep doing it and so they figured out ways to make that happen.

I noticed a lot about individual children – the way they approach play, how they interact with peers, how they use language, and other things they might like to do based on their experience with this apparatus. I can use those observations to help provide other opportunities and experiences in the classroom.

It was gratifying to help build something that turned out to be so high-interest. From the children’s use of the apparatus, I learned where I might modify things, which spaces I could add to or take away from, and how I might build it differently next time. The experience was also freeing. I am not much of a builder but now I feel confident that I can do it again, try different configurations and different materials, and learn what the children have to teach me.


P.S.   I will not be blogging next week.  I will be at the NAEYC annual conference in Los Angeles.  I will be presenting on sand and water tables.  If you are attending the conference and would like to stop by, my presentation is on Thursday from 1:00 - 2:30 in Platinum Ballroom C of the Marriott.  If you do come, make sure you stop by and say hello.

Water fountain

Over 20 years ago, I built a water fountain for my sensory table.  I built it right after I redid the plumbing in my house.  When I turned the water on, water came squirting out of the pipes all over the basement.  My very first thought was: Wow, I bet kids would love to play with leaky pipes.  I kid you not and that gives you an idea of how I think.  However, first I had to fix my leaky pipes and then, with the left over copper pipes, I made a water fountain for the children.  The photo of my original fountain below is not so good because I had to take a digital picture of a print.  

I soldered copper tubing and connectors and elbows together to make this.  I taped funnels onto the ends and then drilled holes in the top pipes.  I drilled too many holes so I had to duct tape some of them up again to increase the pressure so the water would actually squirt out of the fountain.

That water fountain lasted me many years until I made a new one in 2006 out of PVC pipe.  Since I had a bigger table, I was able to build a bigger fountain.  You can see how I built it on an earlier post.

At the same time, I made a companion piece for the infant/toddler sensory table.  It was the same, only smaller.

This year for the first time, I combined the two tables side-by-side in the sensory area.

Interestingly, the children mostly played with one water fountain or the other.  The one thing it did do was increase the capacity of how many children could be there at one time.  How about 10?

Like any apparatus, there are a multitude of explorations and experiments I could highlight.  I want to highlight just three that all center around the small water fountain.  The small water fountain has never been in my room because it was an apparatus I fashioned for the infant/toddler room.

In the first video, two children pour water into the white funnel.  When that is filled, the child with the watering can starts to fill the blue funnel.  Watch as they experiment.


Little water fountain 1 from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

There are several things to note in the video.  The first is the height at which the water springs out of the fountain.  It is pretty anemic.  The second is that the child with the watering can has figured out that water going down the funnel into the pipes makes a "swirl."  He points it out to the other child and they both end up helping the "swirl" with their fingers.  The third is the level of the water in the sensory table.  It is almost up to the holes of the fountain.  That is important because it leads directly to the next exploration by these two children.

At some point in their explorations, one child noticed how high the water was in the tub.  He suggested that they fill the tub so it covers the holes of the water fountain to see what happens.  That is exactly what they did.  As the one child pours water into the yellow funnel, they watch the water bubbling out of the hole that is under water.


Little water fountain 2 from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

I am not always around to see everything that happens at the sensory table, but I was lucky enough to catch this sequence.  By the end of their explorations, the water in the tub was quite high.  Could they have overfilled the tub so water would spill on the floor?  Yes and I was surprised how careful and intentional they were with their experiments so as not to spill.

The last video relates to the first video.  It was taken on a different day with a different child.  The child found a funnel with a flexible tube extension on the shelves next to the table where the provisions for the table are displayed.  He has inserted it into the yellow funnel and begins to pour water into that funnel which is about 12" higher than the yellow funnel. 


Little water fountain 3 from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.


When you compare the first video to this one, you see that the child in this last video has created more pressure with the high funnel so the water squirts out with more force than in the first video.

So what is the point?  The point is that the sensory table in my classroom is the science area.  It is an area in which the children create their own science experiments.  They act, observe, theorize, test, and observe again.  I suppose I could have set up an experiment in which the children would pour water into funnels with the intention to have them observe the vortex created by the water draining from the funnel.  However, that would be so limiting compared to the multi-varied experiments they author themselves. 

More pool noodles

I started to write about using  pool noodles two weeks ago.  I had bought some noodles over a year ago but could not figure out a use for them.  I had installed a base for another apparatus and when I looked at it, I thought that it would be a perfect base for the noodles.  The base consisted of a crate taped to a sturdy wooden tray that spanned the width of the table.

I threaded the longer, more flexible noodles through the crate and taped them to the back of the crate.  I also taped them to the lip of the table next to the brown planter tray in the foreground.  One noodle, the middle one, was very sturdy so I taped it to the front of the crate so it stood vertically in the table.  That noodle was closed on the bottom end by taping a lid from a plastic jar over the hole.

The pool noodle on the left emptied into the clear toddler sensory table.  I drilled holes in the vertical noodle and the long, flexible noodle on the right.  Since both of these noodles were tape shut on the lower ends, water poured into them would exit through these drilled holes. 

In the picture above, the water exited the end of the noodle on the left because that end was left open.  In the picture below, the child poured water into the blue funnel and the water exited the two drilled holes in the vertical noodle because its bottom was taped shut.

Children are rarely content to just pour and catch the water.  Instead, they experiment with modifying the holes any way they can (see axiom #5 in the right-hand column of this blog).  The child pictured below decided to use the funnels to modify the holes in the vertical noodle.

That same child modified the hole at the end of the noodle that emptied into the clear toddler table.  He found a plastic nozzle of a watering can that was on the shelf next to the table and stuck it in the end of the noodle.  Watch.


Filling his bowl. from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

The nozzle dispersed the water coming out of the noodle so his pan filled more slowly.   As the water slowed to a trickle, he grabbed the nozzle and pushed it in.  Was he thinking that he could get more water out of the nozzle by pushing it in further?  It just so happened that as he pushed the nozzle, someone on the other end of the noodle poured more water in.  That made more water squirt out and he subsequently had to re-position his bowl to catch the water.  What we have here, and something he will eventually figure out, is corresponding coincidences, not cause and effect.

Axiom #6 states that children will block the flow of any medium in the table whenever possible.  Well, it was possible with the pool noodles.  The child in the video below discovered that the tip of a baster fit nicely into the hole of one of the noodles.  Watch what else he discovered.


Baster fun from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

I was pouring the water into the funnel that fed the pool noodle.  The child was holding the baster in the hole of the noodle thinking he had blocked the water from coming out.  But he heard water coming out somewhere.  He was not sure if it was from the noodle or from where I was filling the noodle so he kept looking around for the source of the water.  He then pulled the baster out and to his great surprise and amusement, the water squirted up and out of the noodle.  His expression tells it all.

As the children played with the holes in the noodles, the holes became larger just from the force of different things being inserted in them.  Later in the week when an older group had their turn at the apparatus, the bigger holes made for the "best" play.  Watch.


Gusher from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.


One child had actually filled the noodle with water through the large red funnel.  He filled the noodle so full that water was spilling out of the funnel.  (Remember this noodle was blocked on one end.)  That child gave a signal that the noodle was full.  At that point, the child holding the basters pulled the two basters out at the same time.  It was a gusher, a dual gusher.  In the video, the child can be heard saying: "This is the best."

By the way, the water was gushing so much that the water was going on the floor.  A parent who was volunteering in my room saw that and quickly moved to the other side to position a bucket to catch the water.  The children now had a new purpose to their play: Can we get it in the bucket?

When I set up the pool noodles, I envisioned that the children would pour water into the top of the noodles and catch it wherever it came out.  That was the extent of my imagination.  As the children played with the apparatus, they showed me a myriad of other possibilities for this apparatus.  Their adeptness at exploring and experimenting gave me a chance to carry forward those experiments to other classes, which in turn allowed other children to build upon the previous knowledge created by other children to generate even more explorations and experiments.  


If you are going to the Washington AEYC conference at the end of October in Seattle, you can see my presentation on sand and water tables on Saturday morning the 29th from 9:00 - 10:30.  If you are going to the NAEYC national conference in LA, you can see my presentation on Thursday afternoon November 3rd from 1:00 - 2:30. 

Inspired

I did not think I would get around to doing a post this week because I did an all-day workshop yesterday in Belton, Missouri.  Belton is seven hours from my house in Minnesota.  I went down on Thursday afternoon and returned on Friday night.  I was gone from home for 33 hours, 14 of which was on the road.  I thought I would be too tired to write this week.

I was tired for sure, but as it turned out, I was also inspired by the people and their efforts at Grace Early Childhood Center in Belton.  So much so that I have to share some of the inspiration.

For this workshop, the participants had to build after I presented them with a framework for building apparatus in and around the sensory table.  In addition, I presented them with axioms of how children play around the built structures at the sand and water table.  (The framework and the axioms are in the right-hand column of this blog.)  In anticipation of the workshop, they had collected all kinds of materials such as cardboard boxes, cardboard tubes, PVC pipes, guttering, etc.

As the participants started to build, I could not help but think that this was really a pop-up adventure for these teachers.  Here is a picture from a pop-up adventure for children from my retirement party last June.  The children could build anything they wanted with the materials on hand.  Adults were there to help only if a child asked.

Here is a picture from yesterday's workshop.  In this case, the adults could build anything they wanted from the materials on hand.  I was there to help if asked.  

They pursued possibilities.

They played with unique configurations.  This group actually took the liner out of the

 sensory table to use as a receptacle for stuff coming out the clear tube from the white box in the 

table.  And, they fitted the drain hole with a tube for the children's experiments in 

theorizing and testing: "where does it go?"

 Some even ventured to use power tools for the first time.

They even made some very unique elements for their constructions.  On the left is a PVC connector taped into a bottle.  When the child pours

into the bottle, which end of the connector will it come out?  On the right is a bottle taped into the

 bottom of another bottle.  

In essence, it is a 

homemade funnel emptying into 

another homemade funnel.  Brilliant!

  They even got to theorize and then test their theories 

about how their apparatus really worked.

I arrived in Belton on Thursday night after dark.  It is always a little disconcerting for me to arrive in a new place at night.  On top of that, I arrived in a storm.  It was raining hard.  There was a lot of lighting and thunder.  The wind was blowing hard.   The next day at the workshop when I reflected on the disquiet I felt coming into this new place just the night before, I could not help but think that some of the staff at Grace Early Childhood Center might be having some misgivings about going to this new place of building to which they had never been before.   During the course of the workshop, several even mentioned that they were not comfortable with the building process.  Despite not feeling comfortable building, they made 17 different apparatus for their tables.  Not only was I inspired by their ingenuity and their imagination---no two apparatus were the same---, but I was inspired by their effort to throw themselves into this endeavor for which there was no blueprint, nor specified outcome.

I want to thank Jan for inviting me down to do the workshop.  I also want to thank both Jan and Jill, the principal, for making me feel so welcome and to make sure I had everything I needed.  And, I want to thank the staff at Grace Early Childhood Center for playing along---and inspiring me. 


If you are going to the Washington AEYC conference at the end of October in Seattle, you can see my presentation on sand and water tables in on Saturday morning the 29th from 9:00 - 10:30.  If you are going to the NAEYC national conference in LA, you can see my presentation on Thursday afternoon November 3rd from 1:00 - 2:30.