Sight & Sound

Surrounded by mylar and paper, every movement makes a sound.

This year, we are exploring SOUND throughout our center as our umbrella project. This has, of course, taken different forms in different classrooms. In the infant rooms, the emphasis has been on offering materials that make sounds when manipulated – crinkly mylar and paper, drums, shakers, etc. The teachers have also been paying attention to the sounds that the babies make, as well as the specific sounds (both in the classroom environment and elsewhere) that the babies seem to notice and investigate. Many of the toddler rooms have been thinking about sound in relation to instruments, singing, and performing in one way or another – from an interest in the Beatles that developed from a love of “Yellow Submarine,” to trying to identify musical instruments and artists from sound alone, to being in a band themselves, to creating their own instruments. One group of toddler teachers, noticing the ways in which the sounds animals make were an important signifier for their children (who love animals), have begun to listen to animal sounds with the children as a way of continuing this thread.  Another group has been thinking about the way sound relates to cause and effect – when something happens (a ball rolling through a tube, a toy dropped on the ground, a shovel of sand dumped into a bowl), there is often a sound that accompanies it. The preschoolers’ investigations included exploring the different sounds that paper can make when it is manipulated in different ways during some visits to the Studio, as well as games with trying to match different sounds and experiments with how sound travels and changes through different materials.

Paper becomes an instrument.

Recently, I have been thinking about the way that sight and sound are linked. This first popped into my head back in December when I went on a nighttime river walk with a group of children and their teacher. It was dark (daylight savings style), and we brought flashlights with us to light our way. Part of our discussion as we walked along was about looking for animals who might be hiding or nesting nearby. As we made our way down to the riverbank, we shined our flashlights back and forth into the trees and grasses, looking for creatures. Did we see any? No. But something else happened – the children began to hear things. Rather than the usual process of pointing at things to ask “What is that?,” the children were cocking their heads and asking, “What is that sound?” They were noticing noises that weren’t necessarily new (cars rushing by on the road, branches knocking together in the wind, water lapping at the shore, geese honking in the distance), but that had gone unremarked in the light of day. This brought to mind that idea that “losing” or dampening one sense causes the others to be sharpened. With less visibility, the children were relying more on their hearing to explore and “see” the world around them.

Shining a light to try to identify a sound in the bushes.

This idea of “seeing” with your ears rather than your eyes actually goes much deeper than this. The research of Lore Thaler, Stephen Arnott, and Melvyn Goodale has found that the use of echolocation by some blind people actually activates their visual cortex, essentially helping them to create a sort of image in their brain through the use of sound. The artist Neil Harbisson, transformed the different colors of the spectrum (and some that are even beyond human vision) into audible frequencies, allowing him to effectively “listen” to them. There have actually been studies that show a consistent correlation between music, emotion, and color for listeners, suggesting that these associations are culturally significant in the US and Mexico, and, perhaps, with time may be found to be universal.  This, for me, connects to a provocation that I have often offered to children over the years: listening to music and thinking about it visually. What sorts of lines or movements would you make with a paintbrush on paper to capture this song? What colors would you choose for this music?

One of the things that I value about an umbrella project is that it offers us a unique lens through which to look at (and listen to!) children's play. Because of our emphasis on sound this year, I have found myself picking up on the ways in which this topic has surfaced in children's play and conversations, and I know many other teachers have as well. It also has led me to make connections between the things that happen day to day at school and my understanding of sound in the broader world, much in the same way that our curriculum for children strives to relate to their lives beyond our walls. I think the next step for many of us this year and in years to come is to take these individual moments and conversations and build upon them, deepening our exploration of sound into something beyond noticing and questioning and into hypothesizing, experimenting, and theorizing.

What possible "next steps" could you imagine for the children who went on the night walk? For children who are interested in different instruments and performance? For infants who are encountering many materials for the first time? 

Paper, Light, Clay: Open Studios Thus Far

So far this year, I have offered four Open Studios (one with paper, two with light, and one with clay), inviting families into the Studio to play with and explore these materials with curious minds and eager hands alongside their children. This has been the most successful series of Open Studios I have hosted in my time as atelierista, which leads me to examine my own hopes for these precious afternoons I spend with families and what has made them so special this year.

The Open Studio for families is a great tradition that was begun by my predecessor, Viki, as a way of offering parents (and grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc.) an opportunity to share an experience in the Studio with their child. As Kendra has discussed before, our philosophy hinges on families as partners in our teaching and important members of our school's community; the Open Studios that I host every other month or so are one way in which I strive to welcome families into the Studio.  They give families a chance to learn a bit more about this space, some of the materials we explore here, and what their child in particular will do in this space, with this set up.

Last year, I wrote this post about our first Open Studio as part of our clay exploration. I was wondering how I could use these special afternoons as a way of also inviting parents into our pedagogical practice and encouraging them to consider some of the same questions we ask while working with young children. My solution to this question for this year has been to ask the families who come to the Open Studios to first read these pieces about exploring art materials alongside infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. I also try to have short versions of these available as handouts and to have poster versions up (although I admit I ran out of time to prepare these things for the latest one). In addition, I post questions to guide our thinking around the room, along with sticky notes and pens for adults and children to record their answers. Here are a few of the questions and answers from each Studio:

"How can you change paper using just your hands?"

"Wrinkling, ripping, waving, scrunching."
"Twisting, tearing, zig-zag, throw in the air."

"What did you learn about paper?"

"It makes a good wrestling mat."

"It makes big noises when you kick it and hit it."

"You can pick up REALLY big pieces." 

"(How) can you alter light?"

"'Blue on it, now black on it... green there!' Simon noticed changing light most when he was moving cellophane and drawing on the light table."

"Shadow is formed when light is blocked. There is heat, too when light is produced."

"What did you learn about light?"

"Light comes down down on it, like this." 

"K. learned that light comes in different shapes." 

"You can mix colors even without paint."

"What makes clay special?"

"You can change it many times."

"You can use it over and over again."

"You can play with it and use it for fun."

"I love the way it feels when I squash it in my hands."

"It involves all the ancient elements: earth, air, fire, metal, water."

Some of these answers came from adults, some were children's answers, and a few were a combination of the two. In every case, it seemed as though answering the questions helped to put some of our own learning and the learning we were witnessing in others into words.

In addition to these questions that I posed, I heard the parents themselves asking more questions of their children as they worked, and many of them were open-ended and inviting: What does this paper sound like? Where is that light coming from? How did you make that with the clay? Parents also asked me about the materials they encountered, questions that seemed to suggest an interest in potentially extending these experiences into their homes:  How do you get these ideas for provocations? What kind of lights are these? What type of clay is this? Where can I get some? 

I also noticed parents asking open-ended questions using their actions, rather than their words. A father turned and quietly watched what another child's work, inviting his daughter to look at the discoveries of this child.  A mother with her infant child gently brought some rope lights to her lap, running her hands over them as she held them within reach of her son. A father rolled a simple ball of clay, offering it to his daughter to see what she would do with it.

These meetings in the Studio together have also offered parents from multiple classrooms the opportunity to meet and converse with one another about subjects other than just the material. By the end of each Open Studio, many of the adults in the room have met someone new and shared a conversation with them about their children, their experiences in Cambridge and at PTCC, or their interests outside of here. I remember one of the sessions with light occurred right before Thanskgiving; as the children and parents spread and scooped sand into trays on the light table, the discussion shifted to the subject of the holiday, the traditions of the different families, and the many ways of cooking turkey. You often hear that art can bring people together in unexpected ways, and I think this is an instance of one of them.

Throughout these evenings, I was struck by the care and attention that parents were paying to their children, and the attention that adults and children alike were paying to the materials set out before them. One parent observed that the questions I asked were much more focused on the "how" ("How are you using it?" "How did you do that?" "How did it change?") of the material rather than the concrete question of "What are you making?"; I felt that the people present at the Open Studio were also embracing these "hows" rather than the "whats." I was also amazed at the attention they were paying to each other, the negotiations that happened within this shared space, and collaborations that sometimes grew out of this. I am so grateful to work in a community full of people of all ages who are invested in the work we do and are willing to learn more about it through the "hands-on" setting of these Open Studios.

Looking forward to the next Open Studio (most likely in April), I am wondering:

- What else might I offer parents to give further insight into our work as a center and my work as an atelierista?

- What should we explore together next?