ICE TOYS

For the past three weeks, I have had the same apparatus in the sensory table.  It is a combination of a wooden tray and clear plastic tubes and plastic channels set on an incline.

That is unusual because I usually change the apparatus weekly. Sometimes I will leave an apparatus up for two weeks, but then something would be added the second week to change the configuration.  Instead of changing the apparatus these past three weeks, I changed what was in the table and the accompanying provisions.

The first week was snow with scoops, containers and people for a Snow Park.  The second week was snow with paint and paint brushes for Painting Snow.  This past week, objects frozen in ice were added to the table.  In addition, wooden hammers, tongs, goggles and table knives were available on the shelves next to the table for the children to use.

One can make an interesting comparison between the different operations fostered by the different provisions on the same apparatus.  With just the snow, there was a lot of transporting of the snow with scoops and containers from one table to the other actually using the apparatus.  With the paint, the children did much less transporting and much more mixing of the snow and paint.  The wooden tray was used a lot, but the inclines were used as a painting surface.  With the ice, the apparatus seemed to take on even less significance.  What came to the fore were the physical operations to free objects from the ice.  Maybe the sheer physicality of the invitation trumps all other operations.

Watch as this child tries to free the dinosaur from a piece of ice.  Notice how much zest he puts into his swings with the hammer.

Hammering things frozen in ice from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

There must be a feeling of satisfaction to be able to break pieces of ice off a larger piece with force.  That is true for both boys and girls.  Maybe the guy in me appreciates an outlet for some constructive brute force.

I have done this activity every year for 20 years.  You can read some earlier posts here, here and here.  I remember as a child growing up in Minnesota finding things frozen in ice.  My friends and I would take to smashing the ice with sticks and rocks to free the objects. In a way, I am trying to recreate that same experience for the children in the classroom.  With little or no direction, the children understand the invitation.

A mother reported this year that her child asked to make "ice toys" at home.  He told her they needed goggles, knives, hammers and toys to freeze in ice.  The mom asked how do we do that. The boy told her to just look at teacher Tom's blog to find the instructions.  When there is transfer like this to home, I know the venture is worthwhile.   So go ahead, make some "ice toys" and let the children pound and chop away. 

LAUNCHING SNOW

The same apparatus was up for two weeks. 

The first week it served as a reservoir for snow and snow play without mittens

The second week, there was snow again, but this time the children painted it.

Even though the apparatus remained the same, the children formulated different operations in the snow each week because some of the provisions changed; different tools necessarily generated different operations. 

One child's operation, however, was the same over the two weeks.  The first week, he figured out how to launch snow using a clear plastic tube on the incline.  Watch.

Launching the snow from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

That first week I entered the scene after the child had already filled his clear plastic tube with snow and placed it on the incline.  He experimented with the snow sliding in and out of the tube. As he did that, the snow melted ever so slightly against the inside sides of the tube creating less and less friction.  As he experimented, his pushes became stronger until finally he gave enough of a push to send the snow shooting right out the tube. 

I cannot be at the sensory table all the time so I do not always know how a child creates such an operation.  Because I was there in time to video tape it, though, I was able to show the child the following week his previous week's operation.  Immediately after seeing it, he said he wanted to do it again so he went to work.  Watch.

Launching the snow part 2 from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

This second week, his experiments with the snow in the tube expanded in scope.  He moved the clear tube up the incline so part of it was not supported by incline.  Did he think he could shoot the snow further if the tube was higher on the incline? What he found out was that as the snow moved in the tube and the weight suddenly shifted, he almost lost control of the tube---and no snow was launched.  He tried it a second time with the same result.  Finally he dropped the tube down so the entire tube was supported by the incline.  When he pushed this time, the snow launched with plenty of force and he did not loose control of the tube.  Did you hear me register my amazement at the end of the clip?

Even though the table was set up for different activities, the snow, the clear plastic tube and the incline were constants over the two weeks.  That made it possible for this child to experiment with the physics of snow and apparatus in a truly fantastic way.  Would he have done it the second week if I had not shown him the video from the week before?  Maybe he would have eventually got around to it, but the video was an immediate reference back to what he had done the week before which triggered the desire to do it again.  And the second time around, there was even more experimenting, especially with placement of the tube.

Do you know where the snow ended up?  It ended up on the floor, of course.  That was certainly a small price to pay for such a astonishing experiment.  Besides, the snow was easily scooped up with the small dust pan next to the table that could be used like a shovel.  

It is intriguing to think about how a setup helps determine the set of possibilities for the children to create their own operations.  If you compare the current post to lasts year's post on Snow Tubes, you get an idea of how operations can be influenced by the structure and the provisions. Last year there was snow and clear plastic tubes like this year.  However, this year there was an incline. The incline part of the apparatus made it possible for this child to "launch" the snow.

That makes me wonder what other variables might determine a set of possible operations for the children to author.  That's a big TBD.

PAINTING SNOW - 2014

Last year I wrote a post about Painting Snow  If you look at that post, you will see that the only apparatus was a wooden tray for the children to use as a platform above the table.  This year, the tray is still there and I left the incline tube and slide from the previous week's Snow Park.

Snow is a wonderful medium on which to paint.  It is such an intense white, that even the watered-down tempera paints show up nicely.

Look at this series of pictures showing a child painting with the magenta paint.  Notice how the color expands.

How much of this painting is a conscious effort to explore color and how much is it an act of affecting his environment---the snow---to change it?  In any case, it looks like he is about to add some red to the magenta.

The reason for long handle paint brushes to slow down the process of adding color to the snow.  If the children were simply to pour the paint on the snow, the activity would be done in no time.  With the brushes, the children apply smaller amounts of paint.  Watch how this works.  The child has lined up his paint pots so he can add the paints with the brushes to the bowl of snow.

Mixing snow and paint from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

What does he get?  He gets some vibrant snow, for sure.  Is it a color investigation or is it a mixing exploration?

At some point, though, the addition of paint to snow becomes just a mixing exercise.  Watch the short video below to see the child stirring snow, melted snow and all the colors together.

Mixing melted snow and paint from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

What does he get?  A cold brown concoction.

With a set up like this, there are other things to paint besides the snow.  There is the incline apparatus.

There is the table itself.

Or maybe even yourself.

I am still left with questions.  Does painting snow give children a sense of agency to affect a change in the snow?  Is painting snow a color investigation or a mixing exploration?  Does it switch between the two?  If so, what precludes the switch?  How much do the properties of the snow define either that investigation or that exploration?  Do the children have a better understanding of the properties of the snow by painting it?  Why do children paint other things in addition to the snow?

SNOW PARK

We have had our share of snow and cold this winter.  School was closed 5 times in January because it was so cold---in the range of -40 degrees windchill.  (At -40 the C and F temperature scales converge).  Because snow is such a big part of our experience with nature in Minnesota, I like to bring snow into the classroom once or twice during the winter.  That way the children do not need to get all dressed up to learn about the properties of snow.  Imagine playing with snow without coats or mittens.  The hands get cold for sure, but they can scoop and dig in the white stuff in the comfort of indoor temperatures.

Last year I wrote about bringing the snow into the sensory table in a post entitled Snow Tubes.  In that post the children were able to explore the snow using various kinds of tubes.

This year, besides the loose, clear plastic tubes, I set a couple of tubes---one clear and one not clear---on an incline.  Two pieces of plastic channels were taped to the tubes to create open snow slides.

I call it a Snow Park because I added people and figures to the provisions for the table.

OK, calling it a snow park may be a stretch, but there was no shortage of people and figures going down the tubes and the slides with the snow.  

The people and the figures often get stuck, but that created a challenge for the children to see if they could somehow make the figures drop down the tube.  How do children know to pound the tube to make the figures go down?

It took me a couple of tries to get the incline stable enough so the children could use it without it toppling over.  After all, children are the best testers of the integrity of an apparatus.  To get a steep enough incline, I taped two planter trays together at the ends.  A nice feature of this arrangement is that the top planter tray is open, so it creates another space to work in for the children.  

A white, wooden tray that spans the table is added which creates a platform on which the children can work above the bottom of the table.  The white tray has a dual purpose in this arrangement: it also serves as an anchor onto which the planter tray structure is taped.  With enough duct tape, there is no toppling of this structure.

If you look at the apparatus as a whole, you can see that it divides the table into several spaces with different levels.  That makes the space more complex and intriguing for the children.  In addition, the children bring their own complexity of operations to bear on the apparatus.  What does the intersection of those two complexities yield?  One of the things it yields is focused engagement in the different spaces on the different levels.

This picture is a good illustration of the many levels and spaces the children can work on and in for this particular apparatus.

Part of the complexity of the sensory table is that it is also a science table.  Children are always investigating how the physical world works.  Here is a nice example of one of those experiments with the snow in one of the loose tubes.

Ooopsie from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

How great is that!  This video also highlights the difference between experimenting with snow outside and inside.  Outside it would be hard to use the tubes without mittens and if the snow fell out of the tube on the ground it would be no big deal.  Inside, the child is able to feel the cold with his hands and comfortably watch the snow slide from one end of the tube to the other.  And if the snow falls out on the floor, there is a surprise incongruity. Thus a child's scientific term for a surprise incongruity: ooopsie.





  

REFLECTIONS ON A WORKSHOP

This past weekend, I was invited to do a workshop for the Head Start group in Minot, North Dakota.  Shirley, the Professional Development Coordinator, attended my presentation on sensory tables at the NAEYC annual conference in Washington, D.C. this past November.  Early in December, she asked me if I would be willing to travel to Minot to do a workshop for the staff in January.  (I had never been to Minot but I figured how much colder could it be than Minnesota in the middle of the winter.)  In discussing what type of workshop, we settled on a balance between my PowerPoint presentation and the staff building using duct tape, boxes, cardboard tubes, and whatever else they could scrounge up.  The PowerPoint presentation was to set the stage for the building and I would circulate between the various building groups to act as a resource.

The day before the workshop Shirley and Karen, the director, gave me a tour of the Head Start building.  The first room I saw was the room I was to present in.  It was a large room because they were expecting about 60 or so staff.  Right away I noticed they had a small hill of boxes, a stack of long cardboard tubes and a table of tools and tape.  I knew they were ready.

They also showed me around the center.  The first thing I looked at when I went into each of the rooms was the set up for their sensory tables. That was good because then I could do a few last minute changes to my presentation to include ideas to think about when setting up a sensory area.  A couple of years ago, I did a post on set up for the sensory table.  It is called: Taking My Own Advice.

One of the things I like to do in my workshops is post documentation on the walls or cabinets. There are two reasons for that.  As people come in, they have something concrete to look at to prime the pump of their imagination.  The second reason is to display additional apparatus accompanied by written explanations that are not in the presentation.

You can see the documentation on the cabinets in the back.  You can also see the table of tools and cart of PVC pipes.  And if you look to the left at the end of the cabinets behind the colorful mat, you can see the small hill of boxes.

As the staff arrived on a cold and snowy morning, they brought more tools, more boxes and a variety of other materials to build with.  Clearly they had already thought about possibilities for building.

And build they did.  Most of the participants started out in the big room using the power tools. That surprised me because I thought we would start out using just utility knives and duct tape.  I quickly realized this was not a timid group.

Some of the staff had never used power tools before but they went right to work.  To use a drill or a big saw for the first time must be empowering.







At one point early on, there was a line waiting to use the power tools.

Staff who were housed in the building left the big room to work in their own classrooms. 

And work they did.









Others stayed in the big room, especially those who wanted to be close to the tools and whose classrooms are located off site.

For an hour and a half, I witnessed a whole lot of negotiation, collaboration and cooperation.  And to do any kind of constructing like this, they had to do a great deal of problem solving.

To realize their ideas must have been extremely validating.  It was sure a delight to see what they built.  Here is a sample.

When children approach a venture, they are only limited by their imagination.  Since their imagination is unlimited, they have no limits except those imposed by the materials themselves. Maybe for adults the same tenet is true.  The important thing, then, is to start.

Thank you to all the participants at Minot Head Start.  Though there are limits imposed by the materials used in the building, the intersection of the properties of those same materials and the imagination of the builders is stunning.   The proof is embodied in the new and exciting constructions created by the Head Start staff in Minot.  A special thanks to Shirley and Karen for inviting me to do this work with their staff.


P.S.   I will be traveling to the UK this summer for three weeks starting the second week in June. The first week I will be in Scotland and then I will work my way down to London.  If you are at all interested in hosting a workshop, please contact me via the blog or email: tpbedard@msn.com   I am willing to go to individual centers or have centers club together.  Since I am already in the UK, the expense of getting me there is off the table so hopefully I can make it affordable for groups of 10 or more.  Contact me and we can negotiate.  I will also be visiting old friends in the Netherlands for a couple of days---June 28 - July 1--- so I am also willing to do a workshop or two in the Netherlands or Belgium.  Again, contact me if you are interested.

ADDITION #2 TO THE TABLE EMBEDDED IN A BOX

First there was The Table Embedded in a Box.

Then came An Addition to the Table Embedded in a Box.

And now comes Addition #2 to the Table Embedded in a Box.

Here is a view from the table side of the second addition with one of the tubes exiting the box and emptying back into the table.

It is clear from this picture that the second addition has created a more enclosed space between itself and the big box.  You can see the second addition is almost like a wall at the end of the table.  Though it is not nearly as enclosed as the space inside the big box, it is still a desirable space in which to operate for the children.

Here is a side view of the entire apparatus in full operation.

Wouldn't you like to play here?

When I was thinking about embedding the tubes, I could have embedded them in the top of the box, but I wanted to create a reservoir around the holes to catch and hold the pellets.

To do that, I created a false bottom a coupled of inches below the top of the box. I took a piece of cardboard that was larger than the opening of the top of the box because I needed to make flaps to hold the false bottom in place.  To make the flaps, I first measured the top of the box and drew the rectangular opening on the piece of cardboard.   I shaded areas around the corners and cut those shaded areas out to make the flaps.

I scored the flaps with a utility knife so they would bend easily when I inserted them into slits cut in the box.  The slits are the length of the flaps and the thickness of the piece of cardboard.   

It is important to put the tube through the false bottom and out of the box before lowering the false bottom and inserting the flaps in the slits.  Since the tube is flexible, it is doable.

Once the false bottom is in place, I taped the flaps on all sides around the box and taped the edges where the false bottom meets the box.

To be sure, the children found many ways to probe the different features of this apparatus.  Let me show you a video, though, that demonstrates how one child combines several features in one fell swoop.  The child starts by scooping pellets from the table and pours them into a tube that empties into a measuring cup.  He then grabs the measuring cup and steps onto an adjacent stool to empty the cup into a hole in another box.  After pouring pellets down that hole, he drops to the floor to reach into the box to scape the pellets he just poured down the tube into the bottom of the box.

Transporting Project from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

This child has created his own script using the whole apparatus to move pellets from one end of the table to the other.  Talk about intention and industry; this guy has it in spades.

I cannot leave this apparatus without showing you one more video.  I call it Close Encounters because of how close the children are playing together.  Two boys are standing on one stool, one in back of other, pouring pellets down a tube.  At one point, one of the boy's elbow is actually in the other boy's face.

Close Encounters from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

What is astonishing about this video is how close these two boys are in their play.  It is not parallel play and neither is it cooperative; one boy seems to be conducting and the other contributing.  All done without a hint of discord. 

How close were they exactly?  Take a look.

I am left with the question: What makes it possible for these two boys to play so closely together sans conflict?  Is it the children themselves?  Is it something about the apparatus?  Is it something about the operation they configure?  Maybe it is because there is no rule that only one child is allowed on the stool at a time so they are able in a real context to accommodate and negotiate physically using their own bodies.  

What do you think?

AN ADDITION TO THE TABLE EMBEDDED IN THE BOX

The Table Embedded in the Box creates an intriguing space for the children to explore.  One of the reasons why it is so inviting is because the box is big enough to encase half the table and still leave room for children to climb in the box and play at the table.  Or in this case, in the box in the table.

I usually do not let children play in the table itself.  This child I let do it on this day because he had the whole area to himself and I felt like he was "basking" in the space created by the box and the table.  He had found his spot on this day at this time and I was not going to deny him.

There is another reason why this space is so inviting: there is a second box that is taped to the big box.  This box is embedded with two aluminum vent tubes exiting on two different sides of this second box.  

On the left, the tube empties back into the table.  On the right, the tube empties into the big box.







Here is a view of the top of the second box.  You can see the two holes for the aluminum tubes.

Note all the duct tape.  To keep the aluminum tubes in place, the ends are cut so that the tubes stay in the box.  The strips that are folded over are sharp, so I had to make sure they were covered with plenty of duct tape---and then some.

(I hope you can understand the crude drawing.)

Here you can see children fully engaged with the combined apparatus.  In the picture there are five children at multiple levels in multiple and varied spaces.  

Let's see and listen exactly how the pellets rattle down the tubes.  In the video below, the child scoops pellets from the big box, stands up, steps up on a stool and pours pellets in the hole of the tube that empties back into the box.  

Pellets in the Tube from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

I have watched this video several times because I am not sure what he does the second time he pours pellets into the hole.  In fact, he dumps very few pellets into the hole and leaves his spoon on top of the hole.  He quickly ducks down to look into the box to see exactly where the pellets come out.  When he does that, he sees there are pellets pooling at the bottom of the tube so he reaches in to scrape a bunch out with his hand.  I am still not sure, though, why he stopped pouring so abruptly and ducked into the box to see where the pellets emptied into the box.  Maybe he heard the pellets only go so far down the tube and realized they did not empty back into the box like they should have.  If that is the case, he is doing a wonderful job of reading the aural cues emanating from the apparatus.

By the way, here is a picture that shows clearly where the pellets actually empty into the box.  It kind of looks like pellet heaven.

One of the more fascinated play scripts to emerge from this combination of apparatus was making ice cream.  Children would pour pellets down the tube and a child would catch it with his or her bowl.  They would say they were making ice cream.  How pellets rattling down a tube represent making ice cream, only the children know.  And know they do. 

Here is a short video clip in which you can see for yourself the ice cream making process.  As the video starts, one child is inside the box and a second child is outside the box.  You can hear the pellets rattling down the tube.  The boy inside the box has a small metal bowl which he places under the pellets coming out of the tube.  With a killer smile, the little guy in the box announces: "We are making ice cream for sale."  The child outside the box looks inside the box to see if the bowl is full and then tells the other child to: "Put it in the bucket."   The boy inside promptly empties his bowl into the bucket.

Making Ice Cream from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

And that is how ice cream is made.  Hey, but you knew that.

To end the post, let's switch gears completely from the apparatus to a child's investigation of sound that has little to do with the apparatus itself.  It is true it takes place on top of the apparatus, but it has more to do with the provisions a child finds around the apparatus.  (Axiom #7 in the right-hand column of this blog states that children will always devise new and novel activities and explorations with the materials presented that are tangental to the apparatus itself.)   Watch and listen as he experiments with the different sounds the pots, bowls and pails make as he strikes them with two long kitchen spoons.

Making Music from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

First of all, the child has set up all the pots, bowls and pails with care and order. Not only that, he takes great care to figure out how each sounds.  He almost sounds like a musician warming up.  

Could we look at the child figuring out the flow of the pellets, or the children making ice cream or the child doing sound experiments to illuminate all the learning the children are achieving?  Of course. For me, though, I would rather appreciate the wonder that unfolds from moment to moment and be thankful for the time I can spend with these children.