BUCKETS AND PAILS AND TUBS, OH MY!

Last week's post was called Ruminations on a Bucket.   Twenty-five years ago I realized that by placing a bucket next to the sand table, children demonstrated an overarching need to transport the sand from the table into the bucket.  (They had been telling me all along, but without the constructive outlet---the bucket---to fulfill their need, I only saw children dumping the sand on the floor.)  From watching the children move the sand from the table to the bucket, I formulated axiom #1: Children need to transport whatever is in the table out of the table.  (You can see the axioms in the right-hand column of this blog.)

If that is the case, I propose that there are countless variations on the bucket.  In other words, there is a multitudinous assortment of receptacles to receive what the children need to transport out of the table. Below is just a smattering of possibilities.

A bucket that used to hold kitty litter.

A plastic garbage can

A small pail

An animal feeding bucket

A storage tub

How about a box?

(I would not recommend this with water)

Or even a very large box?

In addition, children will create or find their own receptacles.

And there are none too small.

A curious thing happens with multitudinous receptacles; they take on multiple functions.

The bucket can be a little fishing hole

Or a platform for building a stick & gem structure.

The structural hole on the animal feeding bucket is an invitation to explore.

The lip of the tub is a place to hang a measuring cup.

Or dangle yourself.

How about transporting your whole body into the container?

Why not invite a friend?  Now that would be fun.

I must thank you for indulging me in a little playful tomfoolery.  I really had fun putting the pictures together for this post.  It brought back fond memories of finding the children engaged with more than just the apparatus.  There is no area of the table that goes unexplored or unused.  Some of the uses of the containers are quite predictable such as pouring or dropping stuff in.  As you just saw, though, there are plenty that are unpredictable.  And the unpredictable moments make children's determined work so seriously fun.  I am serious!

P.S.  I must apologize for those of you in Kansas City who are going to the CECA conference.  I was scheduled to do six sessions, but I had emergency surgery last Sunday so I am unable to travel.  My next presentation will be at the NAEYC national conference in Washington DC in November.  Maybe I will catch you there.

RUMINATIONS ON A BUCKET

Three years ago, I started blogging about the apparatus I build for the sand and water table in my preschool classroom.  In this post, I would like to reflect back on why I started building in the first place.  To do that, I need to go back to the very first apparatus I used at the sensory table. Interestingly enough, it was not an actual building project.  Rather, my first apparatus was a donation from a parent.  Twenty five years ago a mom brought in a big green bucket.  

She worked at a fast food restaurant and the bucket was from a container for hamburger dill pickle slices---five gallons worth!  I accepted her offer, but because I had a small classroom, I did not know where to put it.  For the time being, I decided to put it in the corner near the sand table to hold sand toys.

If you have been around children long enough you can easily imagine the first thing the children did was to dump all the sand toys from the bucket into the sand table.  That did not surprise me. What happened next, did.  Children started to transfer the sand from the table into the bucket and vice versa.  When I stopped to think about what the children were doing, I remembered all the times I had to say: “Don’t dump the sand on the floor!”  My blood pressure would go up and so would my voice. With the bucket in place, though, I changed my message and tone from a negative to a positive by telling the children to “Put it in the bucket.”  When I did that, I got another surprise: they willingly obliged.

With the bucket ensconced next to the table, besides giving me an opportunity be more positive with my request to the children, I realized the children were telling me that they had this inner drive to transport stuff.  Where does that drive come from?  It may harken back to the time when our very survival as a species depended on our ability to transport the necessities of life.  Even today, transporting can be considered a life skill. When an adult goes to the food mart, he begins a whole course of action predicated on transporting food from the store to home.  It begins with walking up and down the food aisles putting things in his basket or cart and ends with putting everything away once he brings it home. I urge you to reflect a bit on your own day; how much transporting of stuff do you do? Like I said, it is a life skill.

Something else happened with the bucket that transformed my practice in the classroom in a very profound way.  I no longer felt like I had to manage the children’s behavior.  I saw that when they had a constructive outlet to transport, they managed their own behavior quite nicely.  To prove my point, look at the picture below.  At the near end of the water table, the bucket has been replaced by a tub to catch the water draining from the pipe.  What you see around the table are nine children, should-to-shoulder, fully engaged in some form of constructive transporting.

There was a cascading effect to this transformation.  Since I no longer needed to micromanage the children's behavior, I was able to observe more.   And the more I observed, the more I saw the children managing their own actions.  That does not mean there are no conflicts, but it does mean that given the chance (adult nonintervention) and the provisions (ways to constructively transport), the children negotiate with each other their needs and wants with minimum strife and a surprising amount of cooperation and accommodation.

Since I see transporting as an overarching operation that drives children's actions, everything I have built since and continue to build to this day allows the children to constructively transport the stuff in and out of the sand and water table.

By the way, I still honor that lowly bucket by having one at the ready next to the table at all times.

P.S. I will be presenting six sessions at the annual CECA conference in Kansas City August 7 and 8.  If you are in the area, you may want to check out the conference (www.CECAkc.org).  If you are going to the conference and attend one of my session, please stop by to introduce yourself. 

MANAGEABLE COMPLEXITY

One of the very first apparatus I wrote about in 2010 was called Cardboard Chutes.  It was a simple apparatus that was made from the v-shaped packing corners of a refrigerator box.  Set on an incline, the chutes provided lots of opportunity to experiment with social conventions and the laws of physics.

Last year, someone gave me some new packing corners.  I added them onto the sides of the original cardboard chutes to create a slightly more complex apparatus.  The children could now put the stuff from the table down either an open chute or a closed chute.  You can find the write-up here.

I hope you notice the boy at the end of the closed chute.  He is all set to watch the cars and sticks race down the closed chute.  Do you think he is going to get bonked?

This year I added yet another component to the original chutes.  I attached cardboard tubes underneath the apparatus.

Oh my, I must say, this is not one of the most attractive apparatus I have ever made.

Here is another view

More attractive?  I think not.

So if the apparatus is not attractive, does it have any redeeming qualities to make it appealing for play and exploration?  This summer I read a book by Frances Pockman Hawkins.  The title is The Logic of Action: Young Children at Work.  In the book she advocates for provisioning for "manageable complexity."  Well, if the apparatus is not overly attractive, then does it provide for manageable complexity?  Take a look at the following picture and you tell me.

Pictured are seven children actively engaged either in solitary play or group play.  If we start on the right and move around the table, lets's see what we get.  The child in the maroon shirt is scooping corn from the tray---not the table---to pour down the cardboard tube.  The girl with the black hair next to him is scooping corn from the table to pour down the chute that has the blue scoop. The child in the foreground on the right is filling a clear plastic tube with corn from the tub. The child in the foreground on the left is catching corn coming from the corn diverted by the clear plastic tube.  He is filling his own clear plastic tube he has in his left hand with the corn he is catching with his scoop.  The child in blue is holding a clear plastic tube to divert the corn through the tube as it tumbles down the chute.  The boy with the pan is pouring the corn down the chute. The seventh child is behind him (you can see the child holding the red scoop).  That child is also pouring corn down the chute that slides underneath the pan.   I was especially struck by the four on the left.  Were they conscious that they were working together?  Or were they each doing their own thing and it happens to look like they are working together?  Or are two or three working together and the other two or one along for the ride?  Manageable complexity?

Here is another possible example manageable complexity.  This is a video clip of three boys filling the five-gallon bucket next to the table.  As the video starts out, you can see they have already gone a long way toward filling the bucket.  The action begins with the child on the right adding a small scoop of corn to the bucket.  Since so much of the corn is in the bucket, they are literally scraping the bottom of the table and tub for more corn.  The child at the end of the tub (not superman) has filled his scoop and proceeds to walk around the table.  As he does, he says: "I know."  He says that because he has an idea.  The idea turns out to be sending corn down the chute for superman to catch and put in the bucket.  Watch.

Fill the bucket from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

I hope the fact that he could have put the corn directly in the bucket as he passes right by it on his trip around the table is not lost on you.  Instead he has decided to bring his corn to the top of the chute and send it down to his friends.  You might say he is creating a "corn brigade" to fill the bucket.  Manageable complexity?

As you might guess, I like the concept of manageable complexity.  For me it trumps aesthetics. Maybe someday I will find a way to merge the two.  In the meantime, these types of raw materials will continue to offer manageable complexity to create rich opportunities and possibilities for play and exploration.

P.S. I will be presenting six sessions at the annual CECA conference in Kansas City August 7 and 8.  If you are in the area, you may want to check out the conference (www.CECAkc.org).  If you are going to the conference and attend one of my session, please stop by to introduce yourself.