This is a blog for early childhood teachers looking for ways to expand and enrich play and learning in and around their sand and water tables with easy-to-make, low-cost apparatus.  It may also be of interest for anyone who appreciates children's messy play. 

About Me

Early childhood education has been my life for over 30 years.  I have taught all age groups from infants to 5-year-olds.  I was a director for five years in the 1980s, but I returned to the classroom 22 years ago.  My passion is watching the ways children explore and discover their world.  In the classroom, everything starts with the reciprocal relationships between adults and children and between the children themselves.  With that in mind, I plan and set up activities.  But that is just the beginning.  What actually happens is a flow that includes my efforts to invite, respond and support children's interface with those activities and with others in the room.  Oh yeh, and along the way, the children change the activities to suit their own inventiveness and creativity.  Now the processes become reciprocal with the children doing the inviting, responding and supporting.  Young children are the best learners and teachers.  I am truly fortunate to be a part of their journey. 

Saturday, June 17, 2017

A rich space for thinking

In 2014, I built an apparatus I called the Box Peak.  I removed one side of a big narrow box and set it up over the sensory table in such a way as to create two large, open inclines. 

To make the whole structure stable, I embedded a box tower that supported the middle of the structure. 

I built it so children could experience pouring sand down a wide incline.  I had done other big inclines, but not this wide and not this open.  I cut a hole in the bottom of each incline for the sand to exit through the bottom of the apparatus and drop into tubs resting on the floor underneath the holes.  However, the holes I fashioned were much smaller than the width of the incline adding an additional challenge for the children to direct the sand into the holes. 

The reason I want to revisit this apparatus is because I want to demonstrate how the sensory table is a thinking space for both me and the children.  I have already offered my initial thoughts on the apparatus.  After watching the children engage with the space and materials, I decided to change the apparatus.  On one side of the apparatus, I installed a cardboard box that formed a chute for directing the sand into the hole at the bottom. 

I cut two holes in the top of the chute, but purposefully kept its closed nature in contrast to the openness of the large box incline.  The closed nature of the chute also added an extra challenge for the children to track the sand traveling through the chute.  I also wanted to provided a second path for the children to pour the sand through the hole at the bottom of the apparatus.  The child in the video below illustrates the two paths quite nicely. 

She seemed very methodical in her operations.  She filled the pink cup two times.  The first time she poured the sand directly into the hole at the bottom of the apparatus.  The second time she poured the sand indirectly into the hole at the bottom of the apparatus because the sand had to first travel down and out the chute. 

Next, I added a horizontal chute onto the top of the apparatus.  Much like the inclined chute, I cut holes on the top at the two ends.  One hole emptied into the box tower and the other one emptied into the top of the inclined chute. 

My idea was to have the children figure out the path of the sand from the top of the apparatus to the bottom of the apparatus, again adding an extra challenge for the children to track the sand going through two chutes. 

Once they had figured out the path of the sand, they came up with their own self-appointed task: to modify the path of the sand.  One child found a clear plastic tube and inserted it through the hole in the bottom of the apparatus up into the inclined chute. 

When they were satisfied that the tube captured the sand coming down the chute and directed it through the hole at the bottom of the apparatus, it was time for another change in their thinking.  What would happen if the tube rested in the sand at the bottom of the tub next to the sand table? 

That led to a more articulated joint endeavor: filling the tube with sand through their modified path. 

Using that one loose part and the affordances of the set up, the children changed the apparatus to fit their own evolving ideas. 

My thinking begins with an idea of something I would like to build.  Once the apparatus is built, I turn it over to the children for their thinking.  Their thinking is doing; it is playing with ideas that surface in their actions.  Once I observe how the children think in this space, then I come up with new ideas that I try to realize.  Then it is the children's turn again, and so the thinking continues.  There is not script.  Ideas bounce around that emerge from our actions with others and with the materials and the setup.  In other words, this is a rich space for thinking for me and the children. 

2 comments:

Tom, I think the idea of a "thinking space" for both you and the children is very open and inviting.  We talk about play spaces and learning spaces, but a thinking space says something different.  It is both more expansive and can encompass both play and learning–and more specific.  I also wonder what the girl with the orange cup in the video is intending to do with leveling off the sand in the cup and packing it in.  Might that affect the sand's movement?  Maximize the sand pouring in the cup?  Or something else? 

Thank you Jeanne.  I also noticed the child leveling off her cup.  I imagined she was imitating measuring ingredients, something she had seen her mother or father do when baking.  When I was writing this piece, I made the process seem more linear and related that it actually was: this led to that and so on.  At any decision point, there were multiple options and why one was realized over another is not so easily understood. 

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DIMENSIONS AND ELEMENTS FOR BUILDING IN AND AROUND THE SENSORY TABLE

When building apparatus for the sensory table, think in terms of the dimensions and elements listed below.  Using the different dimensions and elements exponentially expands what can be built in and around the table. 

1) ORIENTATION

a) Vertical

b) Horizontal

c) Incline

The incline can vary in degrees from slight to great. 

2) LEVELS

Levels are important for children to experience space. 

3) OPEN/CLOSED

4) SPACES

This follows from #2 and #3.  Create spaces over, under, around and through the table.  The spaces can be of various sizes to encourage exploration. 

5) HOLES

Children need to put things in holes.  Make holes of various sizes and shapes and on various levels. 

AXIOMS OF SENSORIMOTOR PLAY

1) Children need to transport whatever is in the table out of the table.*Corollary to axiom 1

During the transporting, children will spill. 

2) Children will explore all spaces in any given apparatus no matter how big or small. 

*Corollary to axiom 2

More spaces equals more exploration. 

3) Children will find all the different levels of play for any given apparatus. 

*Corollary to axiom 3

Children will use all levels of play including the highest and the lowest---which includes the floor. 

4) Children are naturally drawn to pouring, rolling, or sliding materials and objects down ramps, chutes, and tubes. 

5) Children are compelled by nature to put things in holes.*Corollary 1 to axiom 5

Children will find every hole in and around an apparatus no matter how big or small. 

*Corollary 2 to axiom 5

Children, whenever possible, will modify the holes of any given apparatus. 

6) Children will try to stop or redirect the flow of any medium in the table for any given apparatus. 

*Corollary to axiom 6

Children, whenever possible, will try to completely block the flow of any medium. 

7) Children will always devise new and novel activities and explorations with the materials presented that are tangential to the apparatus itself. 

8) Children will fill any and all containers with the medium or materials provided. 

*Corollary to axiom 8

Children need to empty any and all filled containers. 

9) Children will pursue their own unique physical challenges when working on, at or next to an apparatus.