Unsupervised play in the classroom

I have read that children no longer have as much unsupervised play compared to earlier generations.  I have also read that academics now crowd out free play for children in early childhood programs. I am wondering what is the difference between unsupervised play and free play?  Unsupervised play connotes an absence of an adult overseeing children's play. Otherwise, they are quite similar in that the children wholly choose their actions in an ever shifting dance of reciprocity. That makes me wonder: Can there really be anything like unsupervised play in the classroom? 

To give a context to my wondering, I would like to look at an play episode around a very simple apparatus comprised of two sensory tables connected by a wooden tray.

Not only is the apparatus simple, but so are the material provisions. The tables and tray contain only white sand and glass gems for this play episode.

In the photo below, seven children all seem to be engaged in their own operations that span the two sensory tables.

After about ten minutes, the children have all coalesced around the small sensory table. Since I am across the room, I do not know what has happened to bring them all together for a joint endeavor.

Play trajectory from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

By the time I am able to get over to the sensory tables, the joint endeavor has already dissolved into play fragments of one or two children doing their own thing.

This is certainly free play. The children choose the trajectory of their play from moment to moment. That includes how to engage with the materials and with whom to engage them with. In other words, the play agenda is theirs. There is no adult directly overseeing their play or directly participating in their play. It's as if there is no adult supervising their play. That does not mean their is no adult supervision. It does mean that the supervision is imperceptible to the children.  That leads to another question: If the children do not register that there is an adult around, is that the same as unsupervised play?

I do not have an answer to that question, but I do think there is value to the idea that a teacher can fade into the background so free play looks a lot like unsupervised play.  The value comes from opening up multiple possibilities for children to create a dynamic flow in their play that an adult often sees as disjointed and illogical.  However, that dynamic flow is one of vitality and joy in which the children create their own worlds of sense and nonsense free of adult scrutiny and judgement.  Those worlds of sense and nonsense offer a priceless window into a realm of childhood that is often lost in the classroom.

Fire fighting helicopter

How does a minnow net full of sand and a bowl over a tower apparatus become a fire fighting helicopter in the hands of a child?

It begins with the child lifting the bowl and the minnow net over the top of the apparatus. Once over the top of the apparatus, the child lifts the minnow net full of sand out of the bowl. As he does that, he notices how the minnow net disperses the sand. Not only that, he sets the minnow net in motion as he covers the top of the appartus with the sand.

As the flow of sand dwindles, he scatters that last bit of sand back into the table.

At this point, he switches strategies. Instead of filling the minnow net with sand and placing it in the bowl so the sand stays in the net, he fills his bowl with sand and pours it into the net over the top of the apparatus. That way, he gets a more vigourous flow from the minnow net.

Again, as the flow dwindles from the minnow net, the child moves the final bit of sand over the side of the apparatus that has the cascade incline.

Below is the video of the episode. It clearly shows his focus on how the minnow net disperses the sand. As he scoops sand into his bowl for a second pour, he reveals that helicopters have something that they pour over fire.

Fire fighting from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

It is the child's enterprise to make sense of the world. Sometimes that is as simple as pouring and filling a container with sand. (Actually those operations are not as simple as they seem. See The Art of Pouring.) Sometimes the child brings a certain experience or prior knowledge to the operation of filling and pouring that adds a representational element to something observed in the world. I am not sure the child in this episode has seen a real life helicopter fighting a fire, but he could have easily seen one depicted in a book or video. By bringing his prior knowledge to his exploration at the sensory table, he is able to represent how such a helicopter works. There are several features to his actions which may be salient for him as he depicts the fire fighting helicopter, but one that stands out is how the "stuff" to put out the fires is dispersed; the minnow net offers a credible facsimile of the fire-fighting actions of such a helicopter. As of yet, he does not have the word disperse in his verbal repertoire, but he certainly does in his developing repertoire of physical and observational operations. Without a real or play helicopter in sight, I guess that is how a minnow net full of sand and a bowl over a tower apparatus becomes a fire fighting helicopter.

New presentation

I have not written a blogpost in awhile because I have been working on a new keynote presentation for the 9th anuual conference of the Reggio-Inspired Network of Minnesota. One of the aspects I appreciate about the work of Reggio Emilia is their persistent interest in how children think. In my presentation, I would like us to consider how children think using their whole bodies as they explore homemade constructions at the sensory table. I will use fewer apparatus so I can illustrate how complex and varied children's iquiries are as they research and experiment with each apparatus. Below is the flyer for the event. Early bird registration ends tomorrow, Saturday, September 19th. If this piques your interest, here is the link to register:https://www.mnreggio.org/event-3863889

In the process of developing this presentation---and it is still being developed---I have ended up with more questions than certainties. Here are just of couple of my questions: What is the role of spontaneity in children's explorations? What makes an environment rich as opposed to busy? How are practice and theory related to children's and their actions. How do chidren make meaning as they interact with others and the materials? The questions inspired me and I hope they will inspire you.

Cardboard dividers: a study in proprioception

Proprioception is an inherent sense that tells us our bodies' position and motion in space.  For instance, when you drive a car, you use your proprioceptive sense to know where the brake and accelerator pedals are without having to look at them as you move your foot from one to the other.    

Enclosures with holes offer children the opportunity to nourish and sharpen their developing sense of proprioception.  To that end, I offer an apparatus from a few years back that I call: cardboard divider. The apparatus partitions the sensory table into seven alcoves.  Alcoves 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 are triangles.  Alcove 4 is a square. The children physically occupy the triangle alcoves.  However, the only way children access alcove 4 is through windows.

 

Just the simple acts of scooping and pouring require that the child know how to grip the handle; how to tilt the hand so the scoop can dig into the pellets; and how to twist the wrist to empty the scoop.   A child relies on his proprioceptive sense to complete these actions without having to think about where her hand is or what it is doing.

 

When a child scoops and pours through a barrier, there is an added layer of complexity to how his proprioceptive sense needs to adjust.  Below, the child uses his right hand to hold the window flap open so he can reach through the window to dump the pellets from his scoop. 

The child can see he holds the window open but he also feels that he is holding it open.  The child also sees that he is reaching through the window but he also feels that his arm is extending with the right trajectory allowing his hand to reach through the window.

In the picture below, the child with the big measuring cup is pouring pellets through the same window with a flap.  However, he is not reaching through the window with his hand.  Instead, he balances the measuring cup on the bottom of the window to tip the measuring cup so the pellets drop into the adjoining alcove. 

In the picture, he is focusing on the pellets flowing from the measuring cup.  He does not have to look at his fingers, hand, wrist, arm, elbow and shoulder even though he needs to know internally what each of those body parts are doing to complete his operation,

In the picture below, the child is scooping pellets into his small plastic measuring cup from the inner/square alcove.  Even though he seems to be looking at what his hand is doing, the proprioceptive feedback he gets from his hand and arm acting in that space enable his to complete his operation.

His left hand also plays a part in the completion of his operation.  Somehow he knows that by grabbing the top of the partition, he remains balanced as he digs into the pellets.

In the picture below, the child retrieves a pink plastic cup from the square alcove.  Since she cannot see where she is reaching, she has to rely on her proprioceptive sense in the joints and tendons in her fingers to find, grasp and lift the cup up and out of the alcove.

This operation demonstrates how proprioception is needed for very fine motor operations, too.

In fact, proprioception is needed in all motor operations.  The child pictured below is clearly engaged in a large motor operation to access the pellets in the square alcove.  (Silly me, I thought the only way to access that space was through the windows!) 

The child surely getting lots of internal sensory feedback so he knows where his body is in that space as he hangs on one of the panels of the cardboard divider.

In an article in TheScientist: Exploring Life, Inspiring Innovation entitled Proprioception: The Sense Within,  the authors write that proprioception "... not only enables us to control the movements we make, but provides us with our sense of self, the awareness of our body and its movements as we navigate through our surroundings."

Proprioception is extremely important.  Can you imagine what a nightmare it would be if we had to take our eyes off the road to look for the brake pedal every time we needed to slow down or stop the car!  Children unconsciously work on their sense of proprioception as they interact with their environment.  I contend that we can help children develop and sharpen their sense of proprioception by offering children interesting and intriguing spaces in which they can challenge what their body can do.

The art of filling

Back in March, I wrote a couple of blog posts on the  art of pouring: post 1 and post 2. Well if there is an art to pouring, there must be an art to filling, too.  If so, what would that look like?  How do children display the art of filling?

To examine that proposition, I went back to two setups from 2016.  For both of the setups, I removed the sensory table from the room.  For the first setup, I set out tubs and pails and shelves with all kinds of containers for pouring and filling.    

For the second setup, which came a week later, I removed some of the tubs but added more containers, scoops, chutes and tubes.

                   
In the video below, a child carried out one of the most common operations for filling: pouring pellets into a  a bottle.  He placed the bottle on the floor and poured pellets from a scoop.  However, the scoop was wider than the mouth of the bottle so most of pellets missed the bottle and fell on the floor.


Pouring pellets 1 from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

At first glance, that did not look too artful.  I still think there was a bit of panache in his operation.  As he tipped the scoop to pour the pellets, he used his left hand to hold back the pellets until he had positioned the scoop at just the right angle so he was ready to pour.  He could have slowly removed his left hand to better direct the pellets, but instead he quickly removed his hand and the pellets spilled out as if the damn broke holding them back.  Did he think that by letting the pellets fall all at once the bottle would fill faster or more would go in the bottle?

Another child filled that same bottle differently. First, he used a smaller measuring cup so he could direct his pour more accurately.  Second, he placed the bottle in a pan(on the left) to catch pellets that did not go in the bottle. He also took it one step further by placing the pan in a wash tub(on the right). In the process, his filling operation encompassed multiple containers at the same time.


In the video below, the children filled a white trash bin.  That took time and persistence. The child kneeling next to the trash bin used her scoop to gently even out the top layer of pellets. As she did that, another child added even more pellets to the trash can.  The child kneeling immediately used her hand and scoop to again even out the top layer.


Evening out to the top from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

Was leveling out the pellets an integral operation for filling a container?  How else would the children have known what constituted full in their operation.?

Somehow filling containers seemed natural.  However, the children also found ways to fill objects that were open on both ends.  In the video below, two children filled two different tubes, both of which were open on both ends.  To do that, they stuck one end of each of their tubes in the tub of pellets which basically created two narrow vertical containers.


Filling two different kinds of tubes from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

Because the tubes were so different, so were the operations needed to fill each tube.  The child on the left used his hands to slowly and methodically direct pellets into a narrow white tube.  The children on the right, by contrast, were able to fill the clear plastic tube faster because they could use scoops to fill their tube.  Interestingly, once the clear plastic tube was full, one child lifted it out of the tub emptying it immediately. No problem because the child holding the tube jammed it back into the tub of pellets and declared that they would repeat the operation one more time.

One child even found a way to fill a tube horizontally that was open on both ends.  To do that, the child used his left hand to push the tube into the tub.  Once it was basically buried horizontally in the tub, he dug his right hand into the pellets to find the other end of the tube.  Once his hands encased both ends of the tube, he lifted it out of the tub to take stock of his accomplishment.


Filling the tube horizontally from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

At the end of the video, he turned to me to ask if I wanted to see it come out.  Without waiting for an answer, he pulled his left hand off the end of the tube and all the pellets flooded out.  Judging from his chuckle, he seemed to take great enjoyment out of filling and emptying the tube. 

In the video below, two children went about filling yet another kind of object, one that was open on both ends and on the top.  They placed a half PVC pipe on the floor and commenced to fill it. 


Filling a PVC half pipe from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

I think this pushed the boundary of filling.  How did the children come to see this as a object to be filled? At what point could the half pipe be considered full?

Taking into the consideration the examples in the post, the children pushed the envelope of what could be filled and how it could be filled.  I could say they created a dynamic collage of filling operations.  Since art encompasses the possible, the children use the art of filling as one way to make meaning of their world.  One meaning for sure has to do with understanding volume using a variety of materials. But like the essence of art, their meaning making through the art of filling had elements that were also imponderable.

Noteworthy play spaces

A little over four years ago, I went a little crazy with setting up Big boxes around the sensory table.  I started with four big boxes, one on each end and one on each side of the table.

The idea was to create spaces from which the children could access the table almost like little houses with windows.  In the picture below, two children were kneeling inside the boxes to carry out their operations inside the table.  In other words, they were working outside the box from inside the box.

This picture also shows another space that was created by the big boxes around the table.  The child in the red was doing his operation from between the boxes.  So besides the four spaces of the boxes, there were four more spaces between the boxes at the four corners of the table.

I subsequently added two more big boxes.  Box 5 connected boxes 1 and 6 and box 6 connected boxes 2 and 3.  Box 4 was still a stand alone box.  I wrote blog posts on this configuration here and here.

Though I basically used two more big boxes to encase the sensory table, I did not think about the resulting ramifications of that modification for children's play.  There were several ramifications but let me point out two that were noteworthy in terms of play spaces.

The first noteworthy play space was on top of the apparatus.  Since the space underneath the boxes was highly constricted, the top of the big boxes became stable platforms for the children to do their operations.  That was especially true if they wanted to transport the pellets between large containers and between different levels.

However, for the children to appropriate that space for play, they did have to climb on the lip of the table.  It was certainly a physical challenge to climb up and down, especially if the child carried one of the larger containers while stepping up or climbing down.  That may even have been one of the draws of that play space.

The second noteworthy play space was the floor.  In the video below, the child used the floor as a platform for her operation.  Again, since the space underneath the boxes was highly constricted, she placed three metal containers on the floor so she could fill them.


Floor play from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

However, getting the pellets in her measuring cup to pour into the containers was not such an easy task.  The child had to keep her balance as she twisted her torso to reach over the lip of the table and under the box to scoop pellets in her measuring cup.    

Another feature of the floor that made it noteworthy as a play space was that, as a platform, it was expandable.  Below, the children have taken over the floor space between the apparatus and the cabinets for their play.  There was no way they were going to be able to do their "cooking" in the highly constricted space underneath the big boxes over the table. 

There is a subtle similarity between their cooking and my cooking.  Although I do not spill onto the floor to do my cooking, I do tend to expand onto all the available counter space.

Play spaces are important to children.  The more intriguing the better.  Though some play spaces seem to be highly circumscribed, the children find spaces on and outside the margins of the defined play spaces.  Those spaces outside the margins are noteworthy because the children create new meaning as they embrace and inhabit them.

 

The Wizard of Oz

Once again, I am venturing beyond the sand and water table for the inspiration for a new blog post.  In the process of tagging my pictures, I found a group of pictures and videos of children engaged in dramatic play in the house area.  Their play was a re-enactment of the story of The Wizard of Oz.

Children engaged in dramatic play all the time and in every part of the room.  Often times, it was an event that kept changing and moving throughout the room.  As it changed and moved, the children appropriated props to feed their dramatic play.  What caught my interest in their re-enactment of their Wizard of Oz play was one of the props they used to re-create an iconic scene from the original movie. 

First, let me show you the prop the children commandeered to help elevate their play to a new level.  The prop was a big box that I had set up in the space between the book corner and the house corner.  You can read about how it ended up in that part of the classroom from a previous post of mine entitled  The life of a big box in my classroom

I would say this big box was kind of an odd duck standing in what might be considered a liminal or boundary space.  However, the box in that space offered the children a rich array of possibilities for their play.  In the picture above, the child was playing a little game peek-a-boo.  Or maybe he was observing what was happening in the classroom from his secret blind.

Since it was so close to the book corner, for another child it turned out a place to read in solitude.

And since the big box was so close to the house area, some children used the dress up clothes to become superheroes.  And the superheroes needed a hideout, so they tipped the big box on its side to make their superhero cave.

Before the children could recreate the iconic scene I alluded to near the beginning of this post, they first had to decide who was going to be Dorothy.  The child with the green sleeve took on the role of director.

She indicated that the child in the stripes was the logical choice for Dorothy because she had a basket.  Since they all knew that Dorothy had a basket in the movie, they all agreed immediately.  

After that role was decided, the children re-created the iconic scene when the house fell on the Wicked Witch of the West.   In the video below, one child laid on the floor and pulled a corner of the box over his feet. When he was done, he pretended he was dead by laying face down on the floor with one foot and ankle under the box.  The box was thus transformed into Dorothy's house that landed on the wicked witch.  The child who was directing encouraged Dorothy to crawl into her house.  To complete the scene, she encouraged the other players to join Dorothy in the house.


The Wizard of Oz from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

The excitement of re-creating this scene was palpable.  Their dramatic play was a moving target both physically and metaphorically.  At the very moment when the child pulled the big box over his feet, their play came together in such a way as to transcend space and time.  Though the details of how this scene came together deviated a bit from the original, the children captured to their great satisfaction and excitement the gestalt of that iconic scene from the movie.

With great pleasure, I can safely say that they were off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz.