Play = Focus, Trust Play!

It's Monday, I am on early shift and decide to change one of our room areas to a baby caring center.  We have two little girls in our room who recently became big sisters to brand new little sisters and I wonder if they would need or want to have access to some baby play.

I put out some baby beds, blankets, diapers, some food bottles and of course, some babies.  I also add in some medical kits wondering if any friends would like to take care of the babies if they get sick.

A co-worker extends that play even more, by adding in band-aids and gloves and some other first aid items.

As educators we can only offer play materials based on our observations and provide and take away items as we see the play evolve. My role, I believe in creating environments it to prompt thinking. We can never tell what anyone is learning at a given time, but we can see if they are thinking. I recently read that idea on Teacher Tom's blog and  I agree with his thoughts. He shares that when  Dr. Denisha Jones spoke on his podcast, she said she doesn't like the word "guide" or "facilitator" to describe the adult role in a play-based environment.  Our job, she says is to  be "present, to observe, to step back.  It's not child-centered, it's child driven". 

In the Early Learning Framework we read that "within a pedagogy of listening (Rinaldi 2001, p. 80) educators create environments in which both adults and children can reflect, investigate, and be provoked to deeper understandings".

So I am thrilled one day, when a little friend is very deep into baby care play.  I feel privileged to observe her focus and attention in caring for and feeding her babies.  I actually enter the play mid-way as it is a co-worker who is observing her initially.  My co-worker tells me the play starts with A placing a baby into the highchair and then wanting to buckle the baby in and needing some support with that. She goes and gets the baby food bottles that I had made available, and feeds her baby.  She then, goes and gets another baby, places it into the other highchair and feeds that one too. She says, "more" and uses the sign for more. I offer her a spoon and bowl, wondering if she needs them in her play. She takes them from me.

She decides to move the babies to the table and that is when I enter the play as an observer.

It seems very important that the babies get buckled into their chairs.  She focuses on getting the buckle right and takes a long time to insert each side.  This is requiring concentration, perseverance and fine motor skills.

She looks like she's ready to feed the first baby but then decides to buckle the second baby.

It takes her a while to get the baby propped up successfully as it keeps flopping forward.  She stays with it though, and finally gets it at the right angle to start the buckling process.

The same patient work goes into fastening the buckle.  At one point she asks me for help and I show her how to turn the buckle over so that it will go in.

The babies are buckled, pushed in to the table and ready for feeding!  This process is similar to how we feed the infants and toddlers at daycare!  I realize that when I set up the baby care station that I was thinking the little ones play narrative might be what they are seeing at home.  She surprises me (I'm surprised daily!) by playing daycare eating time.

One at a time she spoon feeds each one.

After she feeds them both from the bowl, she looks at me and says, "more".  She walks over to the highchair and reaches for the bottles that she had used earlier and brings them to the table.

She wants to take them all at the same time, so she tucks them under her chin and clutches them in both hands to make this possible.

The babies are waiting for more food.

She pours more food into the blue bowl from one bottle. "Shhhht, shhhhht" she says while pouring.

She pours some from each container into the blue bowl and continues to feed her babies.  I'm amazed at her organization and how fluid her play is.  She seems to know exactly what she wants to do.

At one point someone enters our room via the gate beside her.  She pauses in her play to watch what they are doing.  I notice the spoon going into her mouth and I wonder what she is feeling and observing.

She turns back to her play, with the spoon still in her mouth.  I think that she is going to continue because she takes the lid of the bottle and pours food into the bowl, but the play spell is broken for the time being.

Her eyes turn up towards our family tree and she points and asks for her pictures.

Her fingers go into her mouth and she looks at her pictures with me.  We talk about them together and for now her play is seemingly forgotten and she is comforted and interested in  her family pictures.

******************************************************

"Choice in play builds focus and sustained attention."

"Consider this - children are not born with executive function, yet in play, then can sustain their focus for long periods."

"When children choose their play, they are more likely to become highly focused  because it's important".

Wunderled Teaching with Sally Haughey

A Pot of Gourd Soup - A Learning Story

 "As children engage with the world, they delve into inquiries, generate new ideas, solve problems, and build theories of people, places and materials. These engagements can be vibrant, exhilarating and noisy, or they can be quiet, focused and solitary.  Providing time, space and materials, rich with possibilities for experimenting, imagining and transforming allows children to create and explore in diverse ways based on their interests. Creating contexts for each child's engagement and participation is perhaps the most important way to inspire meaningful learning experiences."

 Early Learning Framework, page 75

  There are several large pots with lids, several large ladles and a platter of fabric vegetables and some small dried gourds.  There is also a small stove top placed on a white cupboard.  All of these items are tucked in a area under our kitchen counter. On the other side of the plexiglass is the 3-5 room.

One of the reasons I decided to set up this invitation to play was because I know that quite a few little ones are attracted to "kitchen" set ups and engage in play of this nature and we haven't played kitchen for a while.  My adult brain is thinking, maybe they will make vegetable soup.  I wonder what the children will do?

This little one is the first to notice a new play area.  I notice, in general, that she uses the whole room to explore and is very curious when new items are available.  I watch as she takes a dried gourd from the platter of vegetables and places it into a pot.  She uses the large ladle to give it a stir.  It seems like she might have had some experience with cooking and helping in the kitchen at home.  She seems proficient with this play.  

I notice she transfers the gourd using the ladle from one pot to another pot that was placed on a wood stump.  She then gives it a stir.  

It takes dexterity and fine motor skill to preform the tasks she is doing.  She is using planning skills. As I watch her, I realize she is passing the ladle over to me as if to indicate that I should take a bite.  "Yummy!" I exclaim to her. I remember there have been other times when she has offered something to someone.  It seems like a gesture of hospitality and I wonder if she has seen her family serving others.  It seems to be a very kind action that she extends to others.

 Then I notice a little friend beside me holding out a fabric mushroom to her.  Does he want her to have it? I wonder.  She does not take the mushroom. 

This little exchange is non verbal for both children.  It makes me think about all of the ways that we communicate with others.  Actions and gestures have meaning and are used long before young children use words.

 As I continue to observe and tune into her body language,  I realize that she stills her actions.  She seems to be waiting.  I shift my body over to the side a bit more and the little friend beside moves over too.  That creates an opening from the little cubby where she has been cooking.

She quickly picks up her ladle and pot with the gourd still inside and moves to the far side of the room.  I wonder if she is preferring solitary play at this moment?

She sets the pot up on the window sill beside some other toy items that are lined up there.  I thought she might put some of those items into her pot but she seems content with just the gourd.

She climbs up onto the saddle, backwards, and notices something out the window.  Did the light catch her eye or was it something else?  Once she is balanced on the saddle she reaches for the pot and ladle and gives it another vigorous stir.

When she is done stirring, she slips down off the saddle and places her pot and ladle on the window sill.

And that is the end of this play for the moment.  I see her run over to the magnet toys.

Children are given permission, in our room, to move materials around as they need too.  We believe that this allows them to exercise their creativity and imagination and therefore supports their learning. Early childhood educators who design spaces with care, understand the significance of having a variety of play spaces and a variety of play materials.

It's okay for the pot to stay there. She will either come back to it or else it will provoke play for someone else.

A Boy and his Tractor and Trailer - A Learning Story.

This is a Pedagogical Narration, also known as a Learning Story.  It is the process of noticing and collecting moments from daily practice and sharing these with colleagues, children and families to make children's learning processes and inquiries as well as educator's pedagogical choices visible and open to interpretation and reflection.

Simply put, pedagogical narration may be thought of this way:

Listen deeply

Be curious

Embrace wonder

Share the story

 Early Learning Framework, p.51

Here is the story of a little boy in our infant and toddler room.

 I become aware of it slowly but surely.  I watch, and see repetition in his play.  I watch some more to be sure. I am intrigued, yes, he has caught my attention.  

He is sitting on the wooden tractor, his legs pumping up and down, propelling it forward.  He circles around the room with the trailer loaded to the brim behind him.

Everyday, for many days I have seen him driving around the room with his load.  The load is different from day to day.  The play is similar.

A loaded trailer.

And again.

And again.

A transporting schema.  And an overlapping positioning schema.  That's what I think might be happening in his play.  I check in with my co-workers to see and hear what they think.  We talk about Schemas, what they are and why children use schemas in their play. We would like to learn more about Schemas so I borrow some books.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980), a Swiss Psychologist, known for his work on child development, described a Schema as "a thread of thought that is demonstrated by repeated pattern's in children's play, meaning that children's play is a reflection of deeper internally and specifically directed thoughts.  When children are exploring schemas, they are building understanding or abstract ideas, patterns and concepts."

 I like how Alexis Ralphs describes a schema in his blog, onehundredtoys.com.

"Schemas are mental models. They are representations we have in our minds of how objects move,  for how they can be connected and transformed.  In fact, there is no end to the ways we can conceptualize the world, but we tend to group them into around a dozen main categories, positioning and transporting are a few of these."

I learn that there are about ten common schemas but there could be up to forty.  Children engage in schema play daily. As educators, we can observe their play and learn along side them by providing materials and experiences that might support their interests and needs.

Transporting: Picking things up, moving them, and putting them down or dumping them.

Positioning and Ordering:  A desire and  drive to line items up and position objects in space, like sorting things by category or stacking them one on top of the other.  

Every day for many days now, he loads his tractor.

I realize, as I think about it, that I have been seeing him do this for several weeks at least.  But I've only really noticed when the trailer is full.

As I watch him, I begin to wonder about a few things such as how does he pick what he wants to transport?  Where is he going?  What seems important about what he is learning?

I continue to observe.  I begin to work harder at noticing the beginning and end of his play.  In a busy toddler room its challenging to stay in one spot for an extended length of time because other little ones need you, so I ask my co-workers for support so I could focus on him.  I also ask them to contribute their observations as we collaboratively observe his play.

He keeps at it, day by day and I keep watching.  I see him circling the room on his tractor and picking up items from each area.  He takes food items from the kitchen, or animals from where they are set up, cars from where they are set up near the car ramp. Are these things he likes?  Or are they random items?  He tosses a book in the back after he notices it has an ambulance on it.  He has a toy ambulance in the back of his trailer.  "Same, same", he says, as he shows me both.

I begin to notice how he loads items and that's when I see the positioning schema that he is incorporating into his play.

See how carefully he places the houses in the back.  Some things are randomly loaded and some form a pattern.

The cars are carefully placed in a pattern.

He uses these covered blocks over the course of many days.  I begin to notice that he picks ones that fit nicely together in the back.  I realize as I think about the last couple of weeks of this play that he has been practicing and experimenting with some items repetitively.  The blocks are one of these items.

The three smaller penguins fit in the back together and the bigger one sits in the front with him.

Here is an interesting way that he uses the positioning schema with the wood pieces.  He loads the back with random shaped pieces of wood and notices some gaps where he can stand up some of these longer bits.

Loading and them immediately unloading.  And then re-loading using a different method.

Part of transporting, logically, is going from A to B.  Sometimes I will ask him as he drives his loaded tractor and trailer around the room, "Where are you going?"  He usually doesn't say, but will  look at me with a big smile on his face.  I wonder what that smile means?  It seems to me that he is happy doing what he is doing.  I wonder if  actually going somewhere isn't the important part of his play or perhaps it means he will find out when he gets there.

He usually takes his load of items somewhere in the room and unloads them.  This load of wood however, is loaded and unloaded in the same place.  As he unloads he makes a "zzzzzt" sound as each piece of wood is dropped out.

One day, I have a chance to talk to his mom about what I am seeing in his play.  She tells me that when he was between 12 and 18 months, he watched his Grandpa build their house. I wonder if he saw vehicles loaded with materials coming to his house and dropping things off.  I wonder if he is now building on that previously gained knowledge.

These blocks get unloaded onto this shelf.

We find one load left here.

And a load of books is piled here.

I notice him experimenting with oversized loads also.

An oversized floor seat.

Some oversized blocks.

And an oversized bead maze.

 I am astounded at all the ways he thinks of using materials in the room. I chuckle to myself in amazement because of his persistence and commitment to learning.  I'm glad we try to offer a space for children to play in where they are free to use materials how they need to and can move them around from place to place.  

I find it interesting to see all the ways he has been challenging himself.  At times I have heard screams or cries of frustration when an item doesn't fit the way he wants it to.  I have also heard protesting sounds if another child gets too close to the tractor or tries to take something out of the back.  

As I continue to watch him day by day I see him becoming more proficient in loading the white blocks just so, positioning them in the way that he is practicing. I also see him beginning to allow friends to interact with his play.  I support these interactions by giving ideas of words that can be used to communicate his needs.  I realize he is screaming less.  Is he more confident in his play and more familiar with the outcome because he repeats the narrative in some form, daily?

He accepts the block from a friend and inserts it into the trailer.  I wonder what his younger friend is thinking and learning from being able to participate in this play.

In this case, he not only allows friends to help load the trailer with books, he actually asks them to help him unload, saying, "L, I need help, there's too many books".  They look around together to find a place to unload and choose the couch.  I recently heard a TED talk where the speaker was explaining how we use words to transmit thoughts.  I wonder if his actions (repetitive play) and his words that transmit his thoughts are now leading into collaborative play.

I have learned that it is important to continue to have a variety of loose parts available in our room for him to load.  I wonder if we can add in any other transporting materials.  He primarily uses the tractor and trailer, but will also load up a back pack and wear that while riding the tractor.  What other items could we put out for him to explore?

"To enter into a style of teaching which is based on questioning what we're doing and why, on listening to children, on thinking about how theory is translated into practice and how practice informs theory, is to enter into a way of working where professional development takes place day after day in the classroom."

Sophia Shoptauph

I'm interested to see what he will do tomorrow and tomorrow after that.  I will continue to observe and learn alongside him.

 

Playing With an "Un-toy"

 It was Friday!  Finally Friday!  The unusual thing about this particular Friday was that we only had 3 little ones in the afternoon.  In a 12 kid center, that doesn't happen very often, but we embraced it!  We decided to use our time to clean the dreaded under the sink cupboard.  The cupboard where things get tossed when we don't have time to put them away properly or when we don't know where else they belong.  So we hauled everything out of that cupboard and truth be told, got rid of lots of the items.  We get a lot of donations, which we appreciate of course, but due to having very limited storage space, we have to be ruthless with items we are not using.  Under the sink I found these two goodies though. I'm not sure where they came from or how we got them.  We realized that the 3-5's would use them for painting but we would not likely use them that way with the toddlers.  However, I wondered if the mechanisms would be interesting to them?  I taped the lids on and placed them in their kitchen area.

The white one has a pumping action and the yellow one has a handle that  needs to be turned.  

They have been used all week!  The white one is the most popular perhaps because as they press down they can feel the spinning action vibrating inside.  They can also see the inner cannister moving.  Plus, it has a few buttons to press.

The yellow one is a  slightly more challenging action to figure out.  I think it's great that the toddlers are challenged by it though and keep trying.

I think it's even more awesome that we rescued items from going to the landfill and have provided something thought provoking and stimulating to the toddlers.

A long time ago I wrote another blog post about a different un-toy in a different daycare center.  You can read about it here.

Do you have any un-toys in your center?  

Room Design Change. In the blink of an eye.

This morning I was on early shift.  I thought I would take a few pictures of our room for those who are interested in room design.  I take room design pictures regularly because I'm inspired to move things around to meet the needs of our little group of young learners.  Sometimes we move things to clean, or because an area is not being used as much.  I'm proud of how our team work together to reflect and 

creatively use materials, equipment,  and furniture  in new and innovative ways. 

The aquarium on top of this shelving unit was recently housing a group of woodland animals..  There were animals, fake greenery, a uniquely shaped piece of  wood and some tree cookies.  And then it snowed.  So we created a scene inside that reflects the changing world outside.  We brought in our winter tree before Christmas break and painted it.  All of the children in our room celebrate Christmas.  We didn't promote Christmas before or after the event.  However, after the holiday, I hung twinkly lights and a penguin banner on our wooden tree.  Another day, I placed three gift bags by the tree with a few of their toys in them.  They really haven't talked about presents much but rather use the bags to go shopping.  I wanted to see what their play might be like after Christmas when they had a fresh reference point for decorated trees and gifts.  I did not see Christmas play happening which is just fine as the materials are there to support individual learning and the children are free to move items around the room and use as they wish.

Now the woodland animals are on the window ledge!

I seldom use the main lights in the morning.  Even when it's winter and there is not a lot of natural light coming in the window.  I personally, really like the calm ambience that is provided with our floor lamps that we have placed around room.   

There is almost always an interest in playing with cars.  I put away the construction vehicles and set up a parking lot similar to the one below our daycare.  We see school buses there and a variety of vehicles in the parking lot.

So these were some of the areas available to play in, in the morning and then, guess what? The light table we asked to borrow from the local CCRR arrived!  ( we love you CCRR!)  For those of you not familiar with the CCRR, it is a program called the Childcare Resource and Referral.  One of it's features is a toy lending library.  I thought our littles would enjoy a light table and some materials to use on it.  Heather brought us magna tiles, colored and translucent duplo blocks and some see-through wood blocks with interesting item inside to explore.  We are excited to use these materials in the next month or so.

Well, wouldn't you know it.  A room change happened.  We wanted the light table to go where we had our penguin play set up.  But the children are still using the penguins and instead of putting them away we needed to find a new area in the room to put the penguins.  And one thing led to another.  Our whole room was changed!  Does that ever happen to you?

We cleaned, moved items here and there, and creatively set up our room differently but using all of the same things, just rearranged.  The really great thing is that the toddlers respond enthusiastically and their play is refreshed and inspired again.

Here is the light table with the magna tiles.  We have several competent builders in our group so some of the tiles are on the light table and the rest are in the bin under the table in case we need more as building happens.

We moved the kitchen area in the space that previously we had the cars in the the tuff tray table.

We moved the couch where this cupboard had been and this is where the couch was!  

And here is the car area which turned into a train area as well!  

And where the kitchen area was is now the penguin habitat!  We incorporated our wooden cube to make a kind of snow cave.  The mural on the wall was found in a cupboard and we thought it was so lovely and wintery.

There you have it, a tour of our room and some of the things we have going on.  Are you interested in room design?  Leave a comment and let's dialogue.