“A first encounter for children with materials… is a necessary step in children’s process of knowing. Through such encounters and explorations, children build an awareness of what can happen with materials, and adults build the ability to observe and support the significance of each particular experience.”
- Giovanni Piazza, “Materials, Relationships, and Languages,” in ed. Gandini, Hill, Cadwell, and Schwall, In the Spirit of the Studio, p. 13.
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How do we build a relationship with a material? What can we gain by continuing to engage and re-engage with a material over an extended period of time? These were some of the questions at work for both teachers and children this year as each classroom embarked on a three-month-long material investigation together.
At the start of the year, each classroom chose a specific type of material (light, paper, loose parts, clay, natural materials, paint, or fabric) to explore, signing on to have that material present in their classroom every day and be part of their documentation, reflection, and curriculum planning for the next three months. Five classrooms chose natural materials, one chose paper, one chose clay, and one chose loose parts, and away we went!
Our material investigation was by no means an easy undertaking. It required stretching, growing, learning, and disequilibrium on the part of teachers and children. The same way that children often express frustration as they learn a new skill or grapple with a new concept, many teachers found themselves challenged to think differently about their material and its possibilities.
Different classrooms took different approaches to this project – some classrooms set themselves a focus from the start, while others explored more openly, waiting for an interesting question or idea to arise. Some materials came with particular challenges that necessitated flexible thinking and collaboration on the part of teams. For many classrooms, the material itself provided a lens or portal through which other threads could be explored. In a few cases, however, the natural material itself proved the catalyst for going deeper, encouraging the children and teachers to learn more about that material’s unique possibilities.
Many of our teachers took time to reflect on their experience with this long-term investigation, using the following prompts as a starting point:
- How did your understanding of the material and its possibilities change over time?
- How did children's interactions with the material change over time?
- What was surprising or challenging to you during the investigation?
- What brought you joy during the investigation?
Excerpts from their reflections are collected here under the groupings of “overcoming challenges,” “a portal to possibilities,” and “going deeper” in order to share one facet of our work with you. Of course, there is always overlap, and there are cases where teachers’ words could fit into any of these categories. In each case, I used my best judgement to put them under the heading that seemed the best fit. Thank you for reading and please share any of your own thoughts and experiences from this investigation!
- Katie
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Overcoming Challenges
Many challenges arose for different teachers over the course of this work - some expected and some not. Sometimes it was a challenge to find the right approach to the material in order to engage both the children and teachers in the exploration. In other cases, the material itself necessitated flexible thinking around issues, such as how to use it safely with young children.
- Connie, Toddler 1 South
“At first, I thought that the children would show interest in the properties of paper by exploring it in ways that included trying to rip it, crinkle it and scrunching it up into a ball. I was surprised to see that the children rarely did any of those things and would only engage with the paper when teachers initiated the paper play… The challenge for me was that I didn't know what the next steps would be after making paper. It was challenging to continue to have to think about this material that the children seemingly weren’t interested in - and I think that the teacher's lack of consistent of enjoyment with the material also played a huge part in it as well….I think that the dynamic between the children and paper, and each teacher's investment in this material investigation shifted when I hung the Tyvek paper up in the corner. It led to thoughts about space and prosocial behaviors amongst the children. This was exciting! It felt harmonious to be able to combine the paper investigation with a thread that was so prevalent in our room.”
- Myra, Toddler 1 South
“Exploring natural materials in Infant South has been both invigorating and just a bit worrisome. It has been a learning experience when it comes to offering babies materials that are safe. But mostly it’s been fun to watch what they do with leaves, how we offer leaves and how they have been studying the myriad of leaves. It's been such a joy to watch how our babies have shown how long the process of exploring one material can go on for.”
- Dilcia, Infant South
“Something I found challenging was... diving deeper into our seed pod focus of our natural materials. We had some photos of seed pods but we never got around to doing anything else with the thought. Another challenging thing... We had a plan to crack open some acorns a few more times with T2 but because it’s considered a choking hazard, we had to stop. Unfortunately, something out of our control...However, at my old center, bringing any materials from outside or from home was never even heard of and I was told we weren't allowed to (along with many other things we weren't allowed to do).”
- Kelsey, Toddler 1 North
“Throughout this emotional time [the start of the year], clay was offered during each morning and afternoon provocation….Almost immediately, the clay became food… Each child seemed to find comfort and safety with this thread…. [However} after a few months of their exploration of cooking and clay, the idea seemed to fizzle. I was frustrated because it felt like we hadn’t done enough. It seemed like other rooms had found their “thing” and were taking their material investigation further and further each day. It wasn’t until Ivonne brought up the idea that, “children will explore something until they find an answer, or will give up because they have lost interest” that I was really able to reflect on our use of clay. Did the children let go of the cooking idea because they finally felt safe and secure in the classroom? Were they able to accept the idea that their parents would come back at the end of the day? Was cooking a way for them to connect, share and learn alongside their peers, despite their big emotions?
These were questions I wanted to find answers for. So, I observed. I watched the children come into the classroom each morning, happier and happier as each day passed. I listened as parents told us “She spent the entire weekend missing school and wanting it to be Monday!” I learned from the children that not all questions have clear answers - sometimes you have to stop looking to find it.”
- Imy, Toddler 2 South
“At the beginning the kids didn’t really know what to do [with the natural materials]… they mostly didn’t really use them. What brought me joy was, as we left them out, they used them more and more, and they used them lots of different ways.”
- Kerri, Toddler 2 North
“Our interactions with the material first started off very simple with a slab of clay on the floor. Children would break off pieces of the clay and call it pasta, pancakes, or waffles, perhaps mimicking what they had eaten for breakfast before coming to school… After some time exploring the idea of cooking, and adding natural materials, interest started to fade away from the clay, so we decided to change how it was presented… to help them re-engage with the clay… but we had no such luck. At this point, we were feeling a bit stuck, but we then started to think about the element of surprise, and hiding/finding objects [in the clay]. We first started to do this just in the studio, bringing one group to the studio to hide objects and one group to find objects. Through this we noticed that children started to become curious about loose parts, so in our team meeting we talked about bringing loose parts to the classroom. Once this was done, children started to re-engage with the clay, and we observed children build (vertically and horizontally), hide, make marks, and so much more.”
- Kate, Toddler 2 South
“Not that it was a competition, but I'm not sure who has enjoyed our material investigation more; the babies or me. I obviously love natural materials, and I was excited to share my enthusiasm with our babies, families, and teammates. I was a bit intimidated at first, however, because I am not used to delving into an investigation right away, especially when we are so focused on just getting to know our babies and help them eat and sleep. But having a focus on a type of material, even if I didn't really get to observe it in action every day, still helped me get to know our babies through their individual styles of exploration….[sometimes the material itself] was ancillary to the relationship building that was happening at the forefront of their exploration. I learned about how an ongoing material investigation like this is not just about them learning about the material; everything that comes out of it is valuable.”
- Amara, Infant South
“In the beginning of our investigation, hearing the term ‘loose parts’ made me wonder what that really means. I have been taking out some loose part materials to investigate over the past years, but I had not really intentionally thought about how much a loose part can be used in different ways and how children would investigate this specific material differently than others...I also struggled to set up the classroom with only loose parts - I still find myself taking out blocks and other materials that I never thought would be considered loose parts. But I learned that anything you find is considered to be a loose part.”
- Gladys, Infant North
Thank you Katie for synthesizing the school focus and learning for us! It was really fun to read about the different investigations and how they progressed in different classrooms!
ReplyDeleteThank was from Kerri :)
ReplyDeleteThis is great Katie! The summaries really capture the range of emotions and possibilities that came out of these investigations.
ReplyDelete