March Madness II

March Madness is in full swing in the USA.  The big tournament has begun that will crown a college basketball national champion.   As I mentioned in my last post, I set up a basketball hoop in my large muscle area to coincide with March Madness.  In addition to the basketball hoop, I always added the steps so the children could create their own challenges as they attempted to make a basket.  And as the children jumped, I snapped photos of them in mid-flight.

I would show them their pictures and offer them the chance to draw themselves jumping to make a basket.  Part of the invitation was to hand over my camera so they could use the screen shot for reference when drawing themselves in action.

However, the children did not have to climb the steps and jump for me to take an action shot because there were really many ways the children made baskets.  For example, some children attempted to make baskets from the mat.

 

For documentation in the large muscle area, I often posted action shots of the children on the adjacent bulletin board.  One of the pictures I displayed was the picture above of the two children on the tippy-toes attempting to dunk the ball.

Because I usually kept the basketball hoop up for two or three weeks in a row, the child saw the picture of himself making a basket when he came back the following week.

Not only did he see himself making the basket, he noticed how he made the basket.  He made the basket by lifting his left leg in the air as he reached up on the toes of his right foot.

In the photo above, he looked as if he was studying the picture and recreating part of the action: the lifting of the left leg.

He then proceeded to go over to the basketball hoop to duplicate the very same basket from the week before.  

To me this looked like what happens when people, who are trying to build a certain physical skill set, use stop-action shots to comprehend and evaluate their moves.

So often in early childhood education we privilege a certain kind of representation, the kind illustrated by the child drawing himself making a basket.  However, by privileging one kind of representation over another, we may not even think to offer invitations for children to use their body as tools to represent their engagement in the world around them.

March Madness

This time of year in the USA, there are a lot of college basketball games on TV, all leading up to a national championship.  It is called March Madness.  Each year at this time, I made sure I brought out a basketball hoop and placed it on the large muscle mat in my classroom.

In addition to the basketball hoop, I commandeered our green steps from the block area and set them up as an invitation for the children to climb as they attempted to make a basket.

That added a new level of physical challenge to their act of throwing the ball at the basket.  If the child chose to climb the steps, she needed to throw with enough force and the right trajectory while balancing on the 10"-wide step two feet off the ground.  

The children were able to change the degree of difficulty by adjusting the height of the basket between three different settings: 4, 5 or 6 feet

Another way they changed the degree of difficulty was to move the steps closer to the basket.

Of course, many children used the steps to create an even greater challenge while trying to make a basket.  They asked the question: Can I jump and make a basket?

This turned out to be a very complicated action because the child had to compensate the force of her throw in relation to the momentum of her body lunging toward the basket. 

It was always evident that the children had seen some basketball because they knew how to execute a flying dunk.

I have almost 1000 of pictures of children in midair as they attempted to make a basket.  I often showed the children these pictures.   I would usually comment that it looked like they were flying because their feet were not on the steps, nor were they on the ground.

The last couple years of teaching, I started to ask children---after seeing themselves in midair---if they would like to draw themselves making a basket.  For those who said yes, I suggested we go to the writing table where I gave them the camera with the screen showing their stop-action shot. 

With the screen as their reference, they gladly tried to recreate their basket-making prowess on paper.  

The child pictured above at the writing table made the following drawing.  When I looked closely at the picture, I saw a lot of detail.  He drew the cabinet in back, the red chair, the green steps, the blue mat with its sections, the basketball hoop, and the child on the mat who was watching him make a basket.  In his drawing, he even included representations of some of the pictures on the bulletin board next to the large muscle area and one of the florescent lights.

He was very proud of his drawing so he went over to the other teacher in the room to tell her about his drawing.

The children were always fascinated with these stop-action shots with them in midair.  They would ask me time and time again to take another picture and then ask to see it.  I am not surprised I took almost 1000 of these images.  However, I was genuinely surprised at how willingly the children drew themselves in stop action.  Children who rarely used the writing table seemed right at home when it came to drawing themselves in action.  Why? I can't help but think that it was because the basketball hoop with the steps was an unique invitation that both the children and I could mine for something richer and more meaningful than simply making baskets.

Enhancing play and exploration

I am spending some time these days going over my digital pictures and videos to tag them.  I have over 30,000 images so it is quite a task, but boy is it fun.  As I look through the ones that capture play at the sensory table, I think about how an apparatus in the table might affect play and exploration in and around the table.

Here is a very simple example of what I am talking about.  The example features a couple of play episodes around an apparatus I built back in 2012.  I called it a box metropolis.  I built the construction over three weeks, adding boxes each week until there were a total of 25 boxes all connected in and around two sensory tables.

In the first play episode, a child scooped corn from inside one of the boxes.  To do that, he had to bend down and lean under and into the box.  There is plenty of corn in the open portion of the table, so why did he feel compelled to gather corn from inside that box? 

By the way, by having to bend over and reach under and into the box, the child is strengthening his core and working on his balance.  His feet were slightly spread for balance and his right hand grabbed the lip of the table for even more stability.  He was probably working a lot of other muscle groups, too, simply by bending, reaching and scooping and then reversing the process to fill his metal pot. 

He used a plastic yellow scoop to collect the corn in his metal pot.  He did that hands-free because he balanced the pot on the lip of the table.  He was able to do that because he also leaned the pot up against the box.  The metal pot would have been less stable without the help of the box.   

How did he figure that out?  Was it just trial-and-error?  What's interesting was that he balanced the pot using the edge of the box so only a tiny portion of the pot reached in beyond the edge.  That also allowed him easy access for pouring the corn into the metal pot.

At this point, he exchanged his yellow scoop for a black plastic ladle.  He then filled his ladle with corn from the metal pot. 

Why did he switch utensils?  Not only did he switch utensils, but he also moved the pan slightly to the right on the lip of the table.  He still used his left hand for scooping.  Was that because he was left handed or was it because it made more sense to use his left hand since the pot was on his right side? 

He then used the ladle to put some corn into the narrow opening of another, higher box.  For all practical purposes, the only way he could do that was with his left hand.  

That was not such an easy operation because to get the corn in that hole, he had to lift the ladle up to the height of his shoulder, cross his midline, insert the ladle in the hole and twist his wrist to empty the ladle. 

The second episode was quite similar.  A child on the other side of that same narrow box placed a plastic green cup just inside the box.  He put corn into the cup with a long handled spoon, again lifting it from the table to the height of his shoulder.  He used his left hand to scoop, but then enlisted the help of his right hand to guide the spoon into the box.  Twisting his wrists, he emptied the spoon.  Because that was such a narrow opening, some of the corn went into the cup and some not. 


Making coffee from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

He said that the box was a machine for making coffee.  Was he recreating an experience he had watching an adult make coffee?  Did the corn kernels and the sound of them remind him of coffee beans?

From these two short episodes, I would have to conclude that the apparatus changed/enhanced play and exploration at the sensory table.  Imagine the table without the apparatus.  That particular play never would have happened.  Sure, other play would have happened, but the play potential with the apparatus in the sensory table increases significantly.  Because there was not one way to play with and explore the apparatus, the children created their own challenges like pouring corn into a hole at shoulder level.  In addition, the fact that the apparatus was open ended allowed the children to bring their own lived experiences, like making coffee, to their play.

Classroom rules

I am rule-adverse.  I never set about making rules when something happened in the classroom that I did not like or when there was a conflict arising from any sort of disagreement.  In fact, when I first started teaching back in the mid 70's, I had no rules in my classroom whatsoever.  My modus operandi in the classroom could only be described as laissez-faire: a policy of leaving things to take their own course without interfering.  I truly believed that children were capable of resolving their own conflicts and life would be rosy in the classroom.

Early in that first year of teaching, I experienced a day that was far from rosy.  I had a child who said that he wanted to be Oscar the Grouch---and he could emulate him quite well.  One day he antagonized every other child in the room to the point that they were all mad at him and were chasing him around the room.  In other words, it was utter---and I mean utter---chaos.

I have no idea how I got things to calm down.  But at the end of the day, the teacher in the adjacent room told me that I had to do something---anything---so that did not happen again.  The director also called me into the office and told me the same thing.  Little did they know that I had decided that there needed to be a change so there would never be another day like that in my teaching career.

What I decided to do was drop the the laissez-faire policy and create some rules.  I came up with three rules:
                                              RESPECT YOURSELF
                                              RESPECT OTHERS
                                              RESPECT THE MATERIALS

Operationally, those rules meant: do not hurt yourself,  do not hurt others and  do not hurt the materials.  As the teacher, if I thought a child was going to hurt themselves or others or the materials, I would step in to stop the activity.  I would always use "I" messages like: I can't let you do that because I can't let you hurt yourself or I need you to find something else to do because I am afraid the toy will break.

I never sat down with the children to talk about the rules.   Instead, we lived the rules.  When an issue arose in the classroom, we dealt with it immediately and respectfully.  For instance, my Oscar the Grouch friend loved to pick up garbage on our walks.  Instead of making a rule about no picking up garbage, I decided one day that we would take a garbage walk.  I gave every child a paper bag and told them they could pick up anything they wanted on our daily walk.  The next day, I brought out each of their bags so they could each make a garbage collage.  The children glued anything they wanted from their bag onto a nice big piece of tag board.  The collages were 3D and all masterpieces---from my perspective.  However, something very interesting happened: my little friend quit picking up garbage on our walks.

And herein lies the beauty of those three rules.  They are flexible and can be adapted to any context.  For instance, a rule about no hitting would seem to be a no-brainer, right?  For me it was not.  Since I allowed some play fighting in the room, children did end up hitting each other.  When and if children were hitting, then I had to make decisions about intent and degree of force, because intent and degree of force varied with the game and with each of the individuals involved in the game..  If I had a rigid rule, then I would have absolved myself of those decisions.  All I would have had to do was enforce the rule. 

However, by simply enforcing a rigid rule, I would have changed the locus of control from the children themselves to an external rule.  As a consequence, the children would be expected to obey the rules.  I was not looking for obedience.  Rather, I was looking for the children to have the opportunity to internally modulate their behavior by making fine distinctions about the context in which they were operating. 

Those three rules were all I needed for 35 years of teaching.  I think one of the reasons was because, for the most part, life in the classroom was not about rules.  Rather it was about creating  and co-creating a respectful environment that was based on children's innate curiosity and eagerness to learn and connect with others.

Water level - depends

A colleague asked me recently if I had ever done a post on the ideal level of water for the water table.  My answer was: no.  However, that did get me wondering about how I decided how much water to put in the water table.  My conclusion was: it depends.  But in all cases: enough.  What does that mean?

Since I do not limit the number of children at the table, there had to be enough water for all to engage in meaningful and sustained play.  For instance, the nine children pictured below around the water table needed enough water to fill half the table to satisfy their need to play and explore.

That was all the more true considering that some of them kept pouring water from the blue sensory table into funnels embedded in the pipe.  The pipe then carried the water out of the table into the tub next to the table thus depleting the water in the blue water table.  For that reason, I added even more water to the water table.

Here was a concrete example of enough water for meaningful and sustained play.  The two children in the foreground figured out they could plug the pipe with a plastic measuring cup.  Once the pipe was plugged, they could actually fill the pipe with water. That took quite a bit of time and effort and a little help from the other two children at the table. How did they know when the pipe was full?  They figured it out themselves: When the water no longer drained through the funnels into the pipe, the pipe was full.

Once the pipe was full, they pulled the "plug."  To their great surprise and enjoyment, they created a gusher.  All the water that filled the pipe poured out with force in seconds.  I came to this play late, so I do not know how it started.  I have no idea how the children decided to plug the pipe and eventually fill it.  I do know that without enough water, this play never would have happened and never could have been sustained.  (Too many conditionals.  Sorry.)




Here was another nice example of enough water for meaningful and sustained play.  The children set about the task of filling a five-gallon bucket next to the table.  In the video, the water was already inches from the top when a child poured a little more water---carefully and accurately---from a stainless steel bowl into the bucket.  As she finished her pour, the child with the spoon declared that it was enough water.  The child with the spoon then started to stir the water in the bucket with her spoon.  She was soon joined by a child with a little metal measuring cup.  They seemed to want to know how vigorously they could stir without spilling.


Filling the bucket from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

Because the bucket was full and there was still water left in both the sensory tables, there was more than five gallons of water to begin with.  Without at least that amount of water, the children would not have been able to play with the idea of "what is full and what does that mean for our operations?"

However, the amount of water always depended on the setup.  For the giant sponge, I used much less than five gallons.  I used only as much as the sponge with hold.  If I used too much water, the sponge began to float in the table and it became hard to squeeze and make suds. 

Another setup that took very little water was baby washing with a clothesline. An inch or two of water in the table was all that was needed for the children to wash the babies and to wash the clothes.

Water beads was another setup that did not need a lot of water because the children's exploration and operations revolved around the water bead themselves.  In fact, too much water would have necessarily changed the focus of play. 


Water beads from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

There may not have been a need for a lot of water for this setup, but there was a definite need for plenty of water beads for varied and sustained play.

There are absolutely other factors that go into deciding how much water to put in the water table.  For instance, is the setup inside or outside?  If the setup is outside, teachers usually care less about spilling.  If the setup is inside, teachers' tolerance for spillage comes into play for making the "how much water" decision.

When my colleague first asked me the question about how much water, my first reaction was that it was not about the amount of water.  Rather it was about children's need to transport (axiom #1 in the right-hand column of this blog).  The amount of water had to optimize the children's need to transport what was in the table out of the table, whether that meant filling the pipe or the bucket or transporting the beads around the table.  (If you have read this blog post, here is a question for you: How did the idea of transporting inform the question of how much water to use for these setups: the giant sponge and the baby washing with the clothesline?)

Let me leave you with my answer to my colleague's question.  Depending on a your tolerance for messy play and spilling, and depending on the apparatus you set up in the table, and depending how and where you setup your apparatus, use enough water to optimize play and learning.  Oh, and it also depends on you knowing the children and other adults you work with.  In other words, it depends---and you have to make that decision.  By the way, after you make the decision, you can always make another decision about reducing or adding water depending on your observations of the children's play with the original amount of water.

P.S. Before all other "depends," is the implicit assumption of who is in control of the play.

Picture of the year

Every year I designate one of the pictures I have taken as my "picture of the year."  Since I am not in the classroom anymore, I have a very limited set to choose from.  The set for all intents and purposes is comprised of pictures of my grandchildren and their play.

This year I chose a picture that I captured when I took my three-year-old granddaughter to the zoo in late October.  She is the middle child of three and had never had any alone time with grandpa.  I picked a day when her sister was in school and she did not have preschool. Another benefit was that mom could have some rare alone time with the baby.  My granddaughter was excited to go and I was excited to show her the animals.

We did see animals, some real and some not real.  In fact she actually spent more time with the animals that were not real.

Maybe the draw was that she could substantiate her agency by climbing on them and getting up close and personal to them.

There was one other feature of the zoo that captured her attention more than the lions, tigers, polar bears and such.  That feature was the rocks that formed the boundary between the path and the ground.

That got me thinking a lot about boundaries.  What makes up a boundary and how negotiable is that boundary?  The path at the zoo has a boundaries, namely its edges on either side.   When the boundary is not substantial---when the edge of the path is level with the ground---the boundary is easily transgressed simply by not seeing it as a boundary.  Of course, the adult on the scene will make sure the child knows that she has stepped over the boundary.

However, there are times when the boundaries are substantial.  At the zoo, there are fences.  Those are substantial---and nonnegotiable.  Are there substantial boundaries that are negotiable?  For my granddaughter, the rocks that formed the boundary between the path and the ground seemed to be one of those boundaries.  As an adult, I could have pointed out that the rocks were not for climbing and that if she fell on the sharp rocks she might get hurt. 

My granddaughter did not see the rocks as a boundary.  Rather, they presented themselves as  a challenging path to test her balance and navigation skills.

Boundaries are important.  How we perceive those boundaries is even more important.  How children perceive those boundaries is also more important.  Hard and fast boundaries are limiting.  Negotiable boundaries open up a world of possibilities for children to make new meaning in any given context.  Children will always question the boundaries.  That is one of their jobs as part of living in this world.  As adults, maybe we can come to appreciate their penchant for testing boundaries.  And maybe we can even re-examine our own ideas about boundaries.  How do you question your boundaries in the classroom, at home and in the world?  What boundaries are nonnegotiable and why?  What boundaries are negotiable and why?

With that, I give you my picture of the year: my granddaughter using the boundary of the rocks to create her own path, one that is more interesting and has more meaning for her than seeing the exotic animals at the zoo.

Conference thoughts part 2

This post is a continuation of my last post.  Recently, I wrote that when practitioners go to conference sessions, they often look for activities that they can use in their classroom---immediately.  It is perfectly fine to be inspired by others, but early childhood educators need to make the activities their own.  They do that by examining their own values and assumptions around those activities that they choose to recreate in their classroom.

The same is true for strategies.  We were asked in our Teaching with the Body in Mind session at the National Association for the Education of Young Children annual conference last month for strategies for handling loud/boisterous/big-body play. Believe it or not, the four of us each had different strategies that we could name.  Interestingly, we all pretty much agreed on the values and assumptions around this type of play (see last post), but we all approached handling it in a way that fit the context and our own perception/tolerance of this type of play.

Now I cannot speak for the others, but I will tell you how I answered the question around strategies for handling big-body play.  For the most part, I rarely intervened when there was a potential conflict.  For example, in the photo below, two children were crossing the board in opposite directions.  There was a potential for conflict, but I did not intervene.  Instead, I started with the assumption that they could work it out themselves.   I stayed close, waited and kept silent.  However, I was always on the  ready to put my camera down if they needed help.

They actually worked it out themselves with very little verbal negotiation; they negotiated with their bodies in a relational field that was the defined by the board.  Now, if I had intervened too soon, I would have robbed them of the opportunity to practice reading each other's cues and figuring out what to do with those cues.  I supposed I could have asked them to verbalize the cues they noticed from the other or I could have narrated what I saw, but I do think the verbal dialogue/narration, especially from me, can be a distraction from their own body dialogue/narration.

This strategy of wait and see and trust the children to negotiate their differences worked the best for me in my classroom.  In fact, I would say that it worked well over 90% of the time.

However, there were those times when I did step in.  Those times happened when the children seemed stuck; when there was a great power differential between the children; or when I thought someone was going to get hurt physically or emotionally.  Below is a case in point.  Two children were driving across the board from opposite ends.  Their wheels met and neither one was going to budge.  At first, they just pushed their wheels against each other.  But as the confrontation got more serious, they started to use their driving sticks like swords.  One child in particular was getting very upset.  At this point, I put the camera down and intervened.

I cannot tell you exactly how I intervened.  I can tell you that I did not assume that either one had the right to cross the board first.  Rather, this was a conflict that they both were going to work out themselves---with a little help.  To that end, I probably got between the two children and began asking questions individually to each child about what was going on.  I probably restated that child's position to the other child and asked that child the same question and then what they thought about each other's responses.  I imagined we went back and forth many times before they were able reach a solution.

The vexing question that everybody asks is: "What happens if they cannot agree on a solution?" Instead of answering, I beg the question because it always depends on the context.  And the context includes more than what is happening in the moment.  If the children have had plenty of practice in working through potential conflicts---as illustrated by the first example---that vexing question rarely surfaces.

Actual conflicts in an early childhood classroom are inevitable.  They produce moments with great learning potential, especially in the social and emotional domain.   However, potential conflicts are many times more inevitable.  I contend that if we as adults trust the children to handle and negotiate those potential conflicts without adult interference, there will be fewer actual conflicts.