The Power of Provocation

Early childhood education can sometimes get caught between two extremes. On one side there are teachers armed with lists of standards and objectives, tailoring every experience to instruct children in a specific skill. On the other side there are teachers who say they just sit back and watch while the children learn all they need to without adult interference.

The reality of learning is someplace in between. Children learn through meaningful experiences and interactions that allow them to construct their own knowledge and build understandings about their environments through play. But adults are the ones who control that environment. Whatever materials are there for children to play with are there because an adult provided them.

“Just put out the materials and let the children decide what to do with them.” Statements like this reflect the wonderful power of child-directed play and exploration, but they also ignore the adult’s role. What does “just put out the materials” mean? Are they on a table or on the floor? In a basket, on a tray, or in a pile? What are the materials, and how did they get into the classroom? What is the teacher doing or saying while the child explores? While trying to value and embrace child-led learning, teachers sometimes sell themselves short, and forget that every aspect of the classroom involves some decision making by the adult. The key to creating environments where children can direct their own learning is for the adults to make these decisions in an intentional way.

Objects can have social meaning and visible physical properties that impact how we think of them. We approach objects based on our previous experiences and knowledge. Containers can be filled and emptied. Rounded objects roll. Shaking and banging create sounds. Colors change their appearance in shadows and light. Children aren’t blank slates. Every interaction they have is built on the history of all the interactions that came before, as they experiment, explore, and build understandings of their world through play.

 

This is where adults can come in. Not by telling children what they should do with the materials, but provoking the spark of what they could do with them. By making intentional choices of what materials to have in a classroom, and how to present them to children, teachers can provoke children to think “What can I do with this?”  We can plan classroom environments and present materials that spark children’s creativity, initiative, and innovation, not by giving direction, but by presenting provocation. Intentional teaching is partnership with children. It’s collaboration and communication. Intentional teaching is the adult saying. “I see your wonderful idea. Let’s travel there together.”

Where Do You Keep Your Loose Parts?

I see lots of posts on education discussion groups asking “Where do you keep your loose parts?” Or “What does your loose parts area look like?” In my classroom, I don’t have any specific area designated for “loose parts.” Loose parts are just another type of classroom material, which children are free to use where and how they want. However, I do put some on shelves in intentional ways, with the purpose of sparking the child to think “What can I do with this?” 

I set up a small table near the door to have some interesting materials, not necessarily as a provocation to play, but an invitation to come in the door. Entering the classroom in the morning and separating from parents and caregivers can be the most stressful part of a child’s day. Having material to explore as soon as you walk in the door can ease the transition.

I also have a shelf close to the door, but not too far away from tables, with loose parts, containers, and other materials, ready for children who want to explore but might not want to be right in the midst of the play area with other children.

The materials on the shelf are set up in a way to encourage children to think about different ways to use them together. A container asks “What will fit inside?” A tray of beads calls out “Touch me and see how I feel.” 

Sometimes the children choose to play with the materials right where they are.

Sometimes they take them to tables or other areas of the room.

The magic of this space isn’t about what the children will do in this area, or even with particular objects, but what ideas will be sparked, and where they will lead.

All The Blocks

“But they’ll take out all the blocks.”

Yes, they sometimes will. Sometimes they’ll take out all the big blocks, and then the little ones. And the animals, and the cars. Sometimes they’ll fit the little blocks inside of the big ones, and line up animals and cars in every empty space they see. 

That’s what the blocks are there for. That’s what all the toys are there for – for the children to use, to play with and to bring their ideas to reality.

I’ve always wondered about teachers’ hesitancy to let children play with all of something.  Teachers choose to limit children’s block play for so many reasons – concerns about safety, about activity level, about sharing. The limits are usually less about the children’s abilities than about the teacher’s feelings of control. And sometimes having all the blocks being used at once seems overwhelming to teachers, as teachers imagine every possible scenario of what could go wrong. Will the children really clean them up? How much space are they using? What happens if they get knocked down?

But instead of worrying about what could go wrong, take moment to consider what is going right.

Yes, they’ll take out all the blocks. And they’ll work together to build some amazing structures. They’ll add details and figure out mathematical relationships and engineering concepts that they can visualize years before they can explain them. They’ll create a space that is theirs. They feel a sense of ownership and pride as they develop the setting for their play, and create something that has the awesome grandness of being big and complicated. They’ll take out all the blocks, and it can be wonderful.

Exploration Not Demonstration

For the past few years, there’s been a push to integrate science and technology into early childhood classrooms. But in play based programs, especially those based on Constructivist or Reggio philosophy, scientific exploration has been the core of the curriculum all along. Exploring, observing, questioning, predicting, and testing hypotheses – even if no one calls them “hypotheses” – has always been the essence of what children do when they play.

Still, the push to define play by traditional curricular areas can lead teachers to set aside times to “do science”, often in a way that’s simply a modified science experiment from older grades. Following directions to achieve a specific result isn’t scientific exploration. Watching as the teacher demonstrates a phenomenon isn’t scientific exploration. Even if each child has a turn to add one thing to a mixture, or to turn or press one button, that isn’t scientific exploration. Scientific exploration and logical, mathematical reasoning happen when the child is actively exploring an object, a material, or an idea. In play based programs, exploring, observing, questioning, predicting, and testing hypotheses – even if no one calls them “hypotheses” – has always been the essence of what children do when they play.

One of my favorite science explorations is baking soda and vinegar. Not by “making a volcano”, where children watch in anticipation for the reaction they’ve been told to expect (which isn’t actually a “volcano”, since the physics of lava is very different from the chemistry of baking soda and vinegar). Instead, my goal is for the children to explore the materials and figure out what will happen when they mix baking soda and vinegar together.

I set up the activity for my four-year-olds with bowls of baking soda, small spoons and trays. They filled the trays and instantly noted the similarities between the unnamed “powder” and flour.

When the trays were filled, I put out bowls of vinegar with eyedroppers. I had colored the vinegar with liquid watercolor to make it more visible and easier for the children to observe what happened as they mixed.

Initially, the main interest was using the eyedroppers to mix the colored liquid – or “bubble water”, as one of the children called it. They were so focused on the color mixing, they didn’t notice right away when some of the vinegar touched the baking soda.

But once they noticed that someone had made something happen, their goal became to figure out what happened and make it happen again.

The children used the droppers to move vinegar into the baking soda, and then used spoons to move the baking soda into the vinegar – each time observing the reaction that took place, and when the bubbles subsided, exploring the texture of the wet baking soda and wondering what other things they could mix together. This was science – and was much more meaningful and engaging than a demonstration led by a teacher.

Arranging Materials to Spark Exploration

Materials are only as good as the ideas they inspire.

We’ve all had the experience of bringing a new toy or material into the classroom, and it falling flat. The children showed no interest, even after repeated introductions, so that material was moved to the back storage shelf and written off as uninteresting.

I’d argue that there’s nothing inherently interesting or uninteresting about most materials. The key is how they’re presented: the location in the room, their positioning in relation to other materials, and visual cues for possible ways to use them.  In the Reggio Emilia approach, this is thought of as providing provocations: presenting materials in an intentional, thoughtful way meant to provoke exploration and inquiry. It’s not always enough to just have the materials available, the materials need to “speak” to the children and lead children to ask the question “What can I do with this?” 

This week I introduced waffle blocks to my two and three year olds. These are interlocking flat toys that can be kind of tricky to put together. They interlock like puzzle pieces, but usually require more advanced visual motor skills to assemble into three dimensional shapes. I put them out on the rug, thinking that at least the children would fit them together to make long horizontal shapes. I assembled several open cubes, thinking that would inspire the children to figure out how to complete them. Through the morning a few children gave a try at snapping the pieces together, or picked up a cube to examine it, but there wasn’t much interest. Looking at the pile of waffle blocks on the rug, I couldn’t blame them for their lack of engagement. What’s so interesting about snapping pieces together?

The next day, I tried something different. Instead of putting the waffle blocks on the rug, I moved them to a table, placing an unfinished cube in front of each chair, and a small tray of extra pieces in the middle. That way, the visually defined work space would be less overwhelming than a pile of materials in the middle of the floor. But the question remained – what’s interesting about an empty cube?

An empty cube is interesting because you can fill it. So I placed a small dish of rubber animals at each place.

It was the combination of waffle blocks and animals that engaged the children’s interest. Two and three year olds are naturally drawn to fill containers  and to fill holes. The openings in the waffle blocks provided an invitation to drop rubber animals through, and the open cubes encouraged children to fill them up and try to close them. Some of the children lined up waffle blocks across the table, placing animals in a line across them.

Sometimes we need to make sure the materials are asking “What can you do with me?”

Seeing Competent Children

Over the past few years, I’ve been learning more about the Reggio Emilia philosophy of education. This summer, I attended an excellent two-day workshop called “Revisiting the Environment for Young Children”, which focused on creating meaningful learning environments in preschools.

One of the things that sometimes disappoints me about discussing “Reggio” with other teachers, or looking for resources online, is how quickly teachers zero in on the aesthetics of the environment and reduce the entire discussion to decorating ideas. “Where did you but those wicker baskets?” “Look at the ideas for paint storage I saw on Pinterest!” “I’m throwing out everything made of plastic and switching to wood!” But Reggio is more than decorating. A child centered, child focused, meaningful classroom environment isn’t just about beautiful baskets, natural light, and the color of the walls. It’s about the essential view that teachers hold about children.

It’s about viewing the child as competent.

Once we get past the beautiful, artistically arranged environment of Reggio-inspired classrooms, we see the messages that the environment is sending. The classroom environment is set up to support children’s choices. The baskets full of items that can be easily spilled, and easily mixed up send a message that the children are trusted to choose what they want to use, how they want to use it, and to be able to put it away again. The fragile fabrics, plants, lamps, and arrangements of natural materials send a message that children can figure out how to move through this environment without causing damage, or, that if things are broken or knocked down, the classroom community is capable of repairing them.

The arrangement of tables, chairs, and materials and the schedule of the day suggests that children are capable of managing their own time, decisions, and movement through the physical space, but also through the daily routine. I’ve so often heard teachers use phrases like “good classroom management is putting out fires before they start”. Reggio-inspired environments don’t view children as potential fire starters, or as objects to “manage”. They assume that children are competent to make decisions, and that the teacher is there to work alongside the children, not to stand above “managing” them.

As I set up my classroom for the new school year, thinking about materials, routines, and rules, I’m well aware of the limitations of young children. But instead of focusing on the many things that young children can’t do, or that aren’t safe, or that might be frustrating to them, I’m creating an environment that supports what they can do, as competent children acting on the world around them.