PIPES EMBEDDED IN TRAYS

Two years ago, I created an apparatus I called Pipes Embedded in Planter Trays.  I took two 3/4 inch PVC pipes and embedded them through the length of two planter trays.  The pipes ran horizontally through the two trays an inch above the bottom of the trays.

Holes were drilled in the top of the pipes.  The idea was that children would need to fill the trays over the top of the pipes for water to enter the pipes and flow out the ends into tubs next to the table.

With this configuration, the children spent much of their efforts just pouring water into the trays and catching the water exiting the pipes.



This year, I added four vertical pipes to the horizontal pipes.  The vertical pipes fed directly into the horizontal pipes.

I also added another horizontal pipe running the length of the trays over the top of the trays.  I drilled bigger holes in this horizontal pipe.

Did the change in the apparatus change the play of the children?  No and yes.

Children still poured water into the trays and experimented with various ways of catching---or not---the water flowing out of the pipe ends.







But on the whole, the children spent much less time trying to fill the trays.  Instead, they did more experimenting with putting water into the vertical pipes.

One of the consequences of pouring the water into the vertical pipes was that it was not always easy to tell where the water went once it entered the vertical pipe.

I asked the child pictured above "Where did the water go?"  He looked under the tray and without skipping a beat said: "Under nowhere."   

Adding the vertical pipes definitely changed the children's focus of play and exploration.  It changed from filling the bottom of the trays and catching water out the ends of the pipes to putting water and basters into the top of the vertical pipes.  Was the appeal the size of the holes of the vertical pipes?  Was the attraction the new working levels created by the tops of the vertical pipes?  Was the enticement the added challenge to figure out the path of the water when poured into the vertical pipes?

This school year, I am experimenting with my modus operandi.  For as long as I can remember, I changed the apparatus in my sensory table every week.  This year, I will experiment with leaving the apparatus up for two weeks.  There are two reasons for the change.  First, I want to be able to offer some of my documentation back to the children and the parents for their input.  Secondly, I want to see if I can answer some of the questions I raise for myself after looking at my initial documentation.

EMERGENT LISTENING

Two years ago, I wrote a couple of pieces on listening.  One was called: Thanks for Being a Good Listener.  I had just read "The Pedagogy of Listening" by Carlina Rinaldi in the third edition of The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation.  The gist of the post was that listening in the classroom is not unidirectional with the children doing all the listening.  Rather it is multidirectional with the adults and children in the classroom engaged in multiple reciprocal listening exchanges.

I followed that up with a post called: Being a Good Listener Part II.  In that post, I echoed three points by Rinaldi:  1) Children have ideas that they want to express; 2) By listening to them, we give value to their ideas; and 3) By listening to them, we show we care and, as a consequence, we help forge strong emotional bonds with the children.

Last year, I wrote a piece called: Listening Again.  There I found an example from an older video in which you could hear me talking throughout the video.  I gave directions, gave encouragement and narrated what was going on.  It was meant to be a example of what listening is not.

This year I did not think I would write about listening, but I read a book this summer entitled: Listening to Children: Being and becoming by Bronwyn Davies, a professional fellow at Melbourne University in Australia.  The book has got me thinking about listening yet again.

This is not a how-to book.  It is more of a philosophical book that challenges us to rethink our idea of school which is usually "…seen as a place of discipline and control…dedicated to reproduction of knowledge and the production of predetermined outcomes…"  (p. xii)  She wants us to think of school as a community "…not so much a place, or a finite group of people, but a way of mattering, a way of engaging with the world, and of reconfiguring that world as a place where self and other matter, and make a difference, to each other and with each other." (p. 12)

I understand the idea of school as a place of discipline and control because for many years in my career as a teacher it was my agenda in the classroom.  I am not sure I have wrapped my head completely around the idea of making a place where we matter individually and collectively.  Why? Because I am not sure how to figure out what matters.

For the author, an important part of that answer is emergent listening.  Emergent listening is listening in the moment of the encounter.  The encounter is not simply a meeting or a dialogue.  It is a space created by the interaction and the context in which "Listening is not just to oneself and the other, but to the intensities of forces working on us and through us." (p. 35)

If you are still with me, let me see if I can show you---from my understanding of the concept---a few examples of emergent listening. The first example shows two boys playing together at the sand table.  To understand the context, this was one of our first classes of the year. As you watch, you will see an amazing amount of cooperation by these two boys, especially considering this was the first time these two played together.  (The video quality is not so good because it was taken several years ago.)

Dumping the bucket from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

They started with a common task: pouring sand in a bucket next to the table.  As one child began to pick up the pail, the other one recognized what the other was doing and coordinated his moves so eventually they were both doing the same thing again: pouring one big bucket into another big bucket.  It was essentially a dance in which the children were improvising and coordinating their moves.  They were creating a space of encounter in which they were listening to each other on a level that had very few words.  The space was created moment by moment and could not be predicted.

The next example is a bit different because the child was listening to her own actions and the effect of those actions.  To understand what was happening in the video, there are a few aspects of the context that need some explanation.  The water she was pouring contained dish soap so bubbles formed through a lot of agitation.  The funnel the child was pouring water into emptied into a PVC pipe.  Someone had plugged the PVC pipe so it was filling up with water.  These, in essence, are some of the "intensity of forces" the child was working with.

Look what I did! from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

She was quite pleased with herself to see what she could author with her actions.  As she poured water into the funnel, the PVC was so full that the bubbles rose out of another funnel.  For her, it became more than a pouring activity.  It became her creation because she was listening with her whole being in the moment to something she could not have imagined before.

Another example is video of a child who traced her hand to make a handprint.  That activity is done all the time in preschools, but not the way she did it. The child got down on the floor and traced her hand in the sand that had spilled on the floor from the sand table.

Handprint from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

What were the "intensity of forces" flowing through this child to combine the spilled sand on the floor with the operation of tracing her hand?  I venture to say that the author would call this a fleeting moment that leaves a trace of an idea not previously thinkable. (p. 5)

Up to this point, the examples of emergent listening have been videos.  Can a single picture capture emergent listening?  I like to think this one can.

I took this picture from across the room not knowing what the children were doing.  I did know that in the absence of an adult, they were creating their own space of encounter in which each child was doing his or her own thing in relationship with the others.  I know they were acutely aware of each other and what each other was doing and that knowledge affected their moment-to-moment actions and interactions.  I know their encounter was building a portion of our community, a place that was always emergent in which a multiplicity of possibilities for thinking and doing coexisted. (p. 6)

EXTRAORDINARY IN THE ORDINARY

For the past year or so, I have been fascinated by the ordinary life of the classroom.   I would step back to assay the flow in the room. Who played with whom?  Who led?  Who followed? Who watched? What spaces did they occupy? How did they inhabit those spaces?  How did they move throughout the room? How did they intersected with others in their play? What objects did they chose to play with?  How did they use those objects?

Why had I become so interested in the ordinary?  I found a rationale in a book I read this summer called  Dancing with Reggio Emilia: metaphors of quality, by Stefania Gamminuti, an Australian educator who turned her dissertation into a book about how she came to understand the life of the children, teachers and parents in the schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy.  As someone who has never visited Reggio Emilia, this book gave me the clearest picture of what it means to be Reggio-inspired.  By using metaphors, all of which are anchored by pedagogical documentation, Stefania lays out her understanding of the underlying values that inform the practice of teaching and learning in the schools of Reggio Emilia.  Here is an example:

"Pedagogical documentation speaks of gestures of hope,

 possibility, and imaginations, enabling a shared sense of belonging

to a community of learners/dreamers and building a new

culture of childhood.  As such, documentation can be viewed 

metaphorically as a narrative of possibility." (p. 312)

Chapter Four, which is entitled "The Value of Rich Normality: The Extraordinary in the Ordinary," offered me justification for my interest in the ordinary.  I understand it this way.  The ordinary is the context for the extraordinary. You do not plan for the extraordinary.  It emerges out of the "everyday encounters with materials, situations and tools which are not extraordinary in themselves…" (p. 84).

The video below taken more than five years ago is an example of the extraordinary arising from the ordinary.  The child, who had been putting sand down a long incline chute, discovered that he could roll objects down the chute.  Each time he rolled something new down the chute, he squealed with glee as he watched what he set in motion.

Joy from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

The incline was a cardboard packing corner from a refrigerator box.  The objects he found in the table to roll down the incline were comprised of a metal measuring cup, a yellow plastic bowl and red plastic container bottom.  Those were pretty normal materials.  From those simple materials, though, this child created his own physics experiment.  

Another example of the extraordinary emerging from the ordinary can be seen in my post from last January called Classroom Photo of the Year.  I called the photo The Wondrous in the Everyday.

Over the course of a couple of weeks, a child experimented with making balancing structures from the some of the most ordinary materials in the classroom.  As the picture shows, his focus was complete as he tried to balance an old plastic measuring cup on a cardboard tube that was placed inside a plastic coffee can.  

Everyday in the classroom, even the mundane is transformed into something marvelous in the child's eyes.

As the school year begins anew, my goal is to embrace the ordinary life and flow in the classroom so I can "…wonder alongside children at the precious in the small, the meaningful in the invisible, the rich in the everyday and normal."(p. 100)

WORM SLIDE ITERATION

Last week I wrote a post on a Worm Slide I built that I considered a failure.  To be clear, I was the one that thought it was a failure because the weight of the two plexiglass sheets, one on top of the other, was too much to last beyond one class.  I did not want to be re-taping after each class.

The children, on the other hand, had no problem with my perceived failure and inhabited it with their whole being.

I did not give up on the idea of making a Worm Slide using the plexiglass sheets. Instead of using two, though, I created a installation that used only one of the plexiglass sheets.  I still set up the plexiglass on a slant, but I used a different base which gave the apparatus slightly less of an incline.  That did not change the functionality of the Worm Slide, but there was less pull on the tape making it more secure, especially since I was only using one plexiglass sheet.

With this new iteration, I also added a clear plastic tube and white PVC pipe so children could transport the worms down more modest inclines, one of which was opaque, into the adjacent, clear water table.

The incline was not great enough for the two new tubes, so I used small, plastic manipulatives taped together to give the tubes a little more height on the base end.





Without any instructions, the children knew exactly what to do with the Worm Slide.  They put the worms in the channels and poured water to make the worms race down into the tub next to the table.  There were different ways to get the worms into the channels: children placed them in by hand and some poured them out of containers into the channels.  Of course, some children just dumped them right on top of the apparatus.  Watch.

Worm Slide from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

The first four seconds of this video was like a ballet.  Almost simultaneously, three different children worked inches apart on their own operations. The other 15 seconds is more ballet and a study in subtle gestures.

Someone figured out that the tops of the channels were a good place to line up the worms. Once each channel had a worm, she poured sequentially.



The children also used the tubes for their operations.  A child would pour worms and water down the tube and the child at the other end would catch.  It happened that sometimes the child on the catching end was not expecting to catch. What fun!  Watch.

Connected in playUntitled from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

There were at least two captivating aspects to this video.  The first was the unconscious motor planning it took for the child with the coffee can to get it out of the table so he could pour the water down the tube.  His movements were fluid: the can was lifted out of the water with two hands; his right hand went over the top of the tube; he pulled the can over the tube and out of the table with his right hand; and the left hand went immediately to support the can as he moved it to the tube. The second was how quickly the girl's exclamation went from one of vexation to one of delight. They were connected in play at that very instant.  Did they know it?

In one class, the PVC pipe came loose from the lip of the small water table.  It did not stop play, but created an invitation for a different kind of transporting and filling.  

 Oh, am I glad I keep that 5 Gallon Pail next to the table at all times.

Their imagination was fluid and they made use of all the materials at their disposal.  Another example of that fluid imagination was when one child combined two unrelated objects to make a new, unconventional scoop.

New tool from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

By taking two very ordinary objects---a minnow net and a empty container---this child has done something extraordinary.  He has created a new tool for retrieving the worms and the water without having to get his hands wet.

When children have the time and space to do their own thing without adult instruction or interruption, the ordinary easily morphs into the extraordinary.

WORM SLIDE FAIL

Early in my career, I did a little dumpster diving.  Heck, that is how I got the plywood pieces for my first loft.  I hardly dumpster dive anymore, mainly because parents and colleagues know I build installations for the sensory table, so they are always bringing me all manner of usable scrap material. The last time I did dumpster dive was a couple of years ago when I was walking by a greenhouse that was going out of business.  I was intrigued by double-wall, clear plexiglass sheets in the dumpster.  I was intrigued enough to retrieve them.

What piqued my interest the most were the long, narrow channels.  In my mind, I thought they would make a great water apparatus.

Fast forward to this year.  After looking at the plexiglass for over two years, I finally decided what to do with them.  Make a Worm Slide.  I have made a couple of different Worm Slides.  One used long, narrow pvc pipes.

That was back in 2007.  A couple of years ago, I revived the Worm Slide and added clear plastic tubing woven through a hole in the crate that served as the base of the apparatus.

Why do I call these apparatuses Worm Slides?  Because I add plastic fishing worms or lures to the table for the children to put into the pipes or tubes.  Then, they flush them down by pouring water into those same pipes or tubes.  I'm always on the lookout for lures on sale at the end of the fishing season.

To make a new Worm Slide out of one of the plexiglas sheets, I first had to clean out the channels.  They were dirty to begin with, but with two more years of sitting outside, they were a mess.  How do you get spider webs out of a long, narrow tube.?  I used a rag and a long, narrow metal rod as a plunger and they cleaned up nicely.

I wanted to provide easier access to the narrow channels, so I cut 2 - 4" off the top of each channel.

I decided to lay one plexiglass sheet on top of the other in hopes of creating a cascade as the children poured the water into the channels.

There was one big problem with this configuration.  The two plexiglass sheets were too heavy together to keep stable on the slant.  The tape held for one class period, but I could tell that it was not going to last the week.  And besides, because the two sheets were clear, there was no discernible effect with the two sheets on top of each other.

I took the apparatus apart right after class.  Fortunately, I had a helper who was willing to plunge into the pvc frame to collect all the worms.

This is a perfect example of Axiom #2 in the righthand column of the blog which states that children will explore all space in any given apparatus no matter how big or how small.  I actually think that the task of retrieving the worms from inside the space created by the frame added a challenge that sustained the collecting until every worm was accounted for.

I consider this configuration of a Worm Slide a failure.  I recently read a quote from a scientist in which he basically said that science lives on failures.  Without failures, we are not compelled to find more and different solutions.

To be continued...

DUMPING ROCKS

I have shelves next to the sand and water table.  Those shelves hold the provisions for the play at the table.  The provisions change depending on the medium and the apparatus.

One of the things I like to include on the shelves of Hodgepodge and Doohickies is a container---or two---of rocks.

You can well imagine what happens to those rocks on any given day.  They all get dumped into the table.

But is there really anything wrong with dumping?  That is surely an elemental operation for children and probably goes along with the need to transport objects in and out of the table (Axiom #1 in the righthand column of this blog).

How do children move beyond dumping?  It seems that dumping for some children is their only modus operandi. However, the dumping may in fact lead to a whole host of other ventures, often unpredictable.  To be sure, sometimes the rocks are just transported to another part of the table or onto the apparatus and left there with little or no purpose.  However, the "just lying around" state of the loose rocks offers invitations for children to experiment.  Does the rock fit in this container?

When the rocks are within easy access, they can be appropriated for ingredients or decorations in cooking such things as cakes.

Can you see the children's sense of aesthetics?  They have arranged smaller rocks of similar size around the large rock in the center.

Some of the operations fostered by the invitation of rocks lying around involve a more complex set of actions.  In the following video, watch how the child figures out how to catch the rock in her ceramic bowl after failing twice.

How to catch a rock from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

From her laugh, you can tell she is pleased with her endeavor even when it doesn't work the first two times.  It looks so simple to us as adults, but what a great experiment in trajectory.

Here is a slightly more complicated experiment in trajectory using a rock.  The child tries to lob one of those loose rocks into the long cardboard tube.  He misses the first time, but is successful on the second try.

Target practice from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

To me it looks like a form of target practice.  The child has a rock and he wants to get it in a hole at a distance.  Look at the amount of regulated motion it takes to get the rock in the white cardboard tube.  Would you have let a child throw the rock in his attempt to get it in the tube?

In one child's hands, two loose rocks become a musical instrument; they are the percussion for his rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Rock star from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

He starts out with a fast tempo and it just accelerates from there.  Do I dare call him a rock star?

Here is one final invitation to play fostered by the rocks just lying around.  A child picks up two loose rocks from the table.  She starts to smack the rocks together and to her surprise, she gets a light brown powder.  She is cooking and the powder turns out to be a cinnamon topping.

Cinnamon from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

What motivates this child to choose two rocks from the table and then to start smacking them together?  I do not think she expects to get a powder.  Once she gets the powder, though, there is no stopping her.   

There is an interesting sequel to this child's discovery.  A friend takes note of her actions and tries to get powder by picking up two rocks from the table and smashing them together.  No matter how hard he tries, he cannot get powder from his rocks.

Smashing rocks from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

It would seem that there is a lot of potential in those loose rocks as the children try to realize their ideas.  And in realizing their ideas, they are combining many other elements offered at the table such as the white sand, the apparatus, the pots and the actions of their friends.      

If all these ventures started with dumping, then dumping must be like setting the table---a messy, chaotic, serendipitous table.

ADDING A LEVEL TO THE PEGBOARD PLATFORM

One of the elements I think about when I build an apparatus for the sensory table is levels.  Levels seem to be important to children in their operations.  Axiom #3 in the righthand column states that the children will find every level in an apparatus.  Not only will they find every level, but they will also use every level.  That idea was the impetus for adding a second level to the Pegboard Platform so the apparatus went from one level...

to two levels by adding an additional pegboard piece above the original setup to make the Pegboard Platform - Level 2.

That was two years ago.  When I constructed the Pegboard Platform this year, I also followed it up by adding a second level to this year's apparatus.  Since I added an extra tube to the one-level platform, I also added a longer tube to the second level.

Adding the cardboard tubes was an intentional change to the apparatus. You can see how the children appropriate the shorter tube in their play in the latest rendition of the Pegboard Platform here.  The longer cardboard tube presented children with physical challenges.  On the left: How high can I reach?  On the right: Can I stretch enough to both pour and catch at the same time?

There was an additional change that was unintentional.  I did not find the original tubes that supported the second level, so I used new, taller tubes.  

That change increased the gap between the two levels.

Increasing the gap between the two levels changed the play in at least three ways.  One of the ways it changed the play was increasing the visibility of the the pattern of the sand streaming through the top piece of pegboard.  In other words, the children did not have to bend down to see it because it was now closer to eye level.

Secondly, because there was more space between the two levels, children used the lower of the two levels more than when the gap was smaller.  That increase in space allowed the children to pour and fill more freely without bumping into the top level.  

Third, because there was more play on the lower level, there was more play between levels.  The two girls in this video work on both levels.  The one on the right is using the top piece of pegboard to sift her ingredients as she fills her bowl on the bottom level.  The girl next to her fills her bowl on the bottom level and then places it onto the top level.

The diner is open from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

This reminded me of the times I have been in a diner with a open window into the kitchen with two counters.  When the food is done, the chef puts the finished dish on the top counter for the server to take.  Have either of these girls ever been to a diner?  Are they recreating that experience? They may only be pretending to cook and simply incorporating the levels into their play.  In any case, the diner is open for business.

I am surprised at how much play changed by an unintentional modification to this apparatus. Literally, a matter of inches increased the play between the levels.  It tells me space and how space is configured is important.  The problem for me is: I do not understand space well enough to predict how the children will use it.  The problem, however, is always solved by the children if I take the time to observe their operations and explorations.