Filling and Dumping

One activity that toddlers and young preschoolers never tire of is filling and dumping. A container full of anything – sand, toys, food – is often quickly dumped over, its contents spilling to the ground. An empty container is often filled (even if not what was originally in it), sometimes to the top, as a mix of puzzle pieces, toy food, and playdough reaches the top and spills over, prompting the child to eagerly dump it out again.

This process of dumping and filling, filling and dumping, is one of the ways that young children explore how the physical world works, and experiment with their actions on objects. Filling and dumping involves thinking about size, volume, incline, force, gravity, and cause and effect. What sometimes looks to adults like “making a mess” is actually a complex long-term project of figuring out the relationship between a container and the objects that fit inside.

In my classroom, I provide many activities that give children an opportunity to explore filling and dumping. Some of the best materials for filling and dumping are “loose parts” - open ended, non-representational materials that can be used in a variety of ways. Finding appropriate materials for toddlers and twos can be challenging, since so many “loose parts” are small enough to fit in their mouths, or are easily smashed and crushed.

Pompoms and cotton balls are two wonderful materials for this age group (and older preschoolers too). A simple “fill and dump” activity is to put out empty juice bottles with small plates of cotton balls. 

The children were fascinated watching the cotton ball drop to the bottom of the large bottle, but they cotton balls were hard to dump out through the narrow top. So, the next day I switched to shorter applesauce jars that they could fit their hands into.

Setting up the materials in the sensory table provided more room for dumping, and made it easier for the children to control where the cotton balls went. I combined the cotton balls with pompoms to make it colorful, and added napkin rings – another “loose part”, but with a different shape, weight and texture. I also added tongs as an option for picking the objects up,

The children used the materials in ways that I expected, and in ways that I didn’t.

Painting With Purpose

Paint is often one of those materials that’s available in the classroom, but doesn’t change much during the year, unless it’s being used for a specific project. One of the places paint is usually available is at an easel, where it involves gross motor movements, and the experience of painting on a vertical, instead of a horizontal plane.

Many teachers I know (myself included) have conflicted feelings about easel painting. Even in classrooms that focus on process over product, easel painting seems more like a sensory activity than art. Children fill the paper with paint, paying more attention to the sensory process of putting paint on paper than to planning or thinking about what they are creating. The thin easel paper rips as more and more paint is added to it, and changing the paper is a cumbersome process that’s hard for younger children to do independently.

But painting can be much more than just thick brushes at an easel. The process and sensory experience are important, but so are the creative aspects of painting. By intentionally choosing materials, we can balance process with encouraging children to plan, to think about spatial design, to choose colors, and to experiment with the relationship between physical action and their marks on the paper.

When easel painting involves large thick brushes, and only one or two colors, children paint with large thick strokes, mixing colors to fill the paper. But once this sensory process has been experienced, and repeated, and repeated again, the children are often done with it. By mid-year, teachers often say that their children “just aren’t interested” in paint anymore.

But what if we change the materials, and the presentation?

Substituting thin brushes gives an opportunity for greater control over the brush, so children can better plan where they are going to put the paint on the paper, and make deliberate motions. Adding a variety of colors allows children to be more deliberate and purposeful in their design. Valuing process doesn’t mean ignoring the possibility of making a product. When children create, it is to make a product, even if that product is transient and temporary, like a block tower a sandcastle, or a painting that might be painted over within minutes. When we give children choices of color, with materials that they can easily control, like small brushes and thick paper that doesn’t rip when wet, they are encouraged not only to “do” the action of painting, but to be purposeful and think about what they are doing.

One of my favorite paint tools are these 6-cup trays, that each hold a small amount of paint. I’ve used these at the easel but prefer to introduce them as a table activity. On a table top, it’s easier for children to see inside and make deliberate choices about color. Using color coded brushes helps children replace the brushes in the right place. Some paint will get mixed up, but the amount of paint in the cups is so small that nothing much is wasted even if colors accidentally get mixed.

Watercolor cakes are another way of providing a variety of color choices. For the younger children, I add water to the cakes first. Later, when they’re familiar with the materials, I add the step of providing a water cup to rinse their brushes in.

When given materials that they can easily manipulate, and that challenge them to plan, design, and make choices, even two-year-olds can be purposeful in their painting. As teachers, we can value both the children's process and the product they create.

5 Things We Say To Preschoolers

Recently I read an article called,"13 Common Sayings To Avoid". The list seemed geared to middle and high school teachers, and most of it seemed pretty obvious. I continued reading smugly until I came across one saying that I once used frequently, but that I’ve worked to eliminate from my teaching vocabulary. The phrase was well intentioned, with a clear rationale for using that particular wording, but as the years went by, I started to realize that those words might impact children’s emotional and social understandings in ways that I didn’t anticipate.

That started me thinking – what other phrases do early childhood teachers use, that, no matter how well-intentioned, might carry messages that we don’t intend?

1. “I like the way that Jenny is sitting”.

This was the phrase that caught my attention in the original article. Teachers use this phrase to call attention to desirable behavior, and it’s often seen as praising the behavior, rather than praising the child. “I like the way that you’re sitting” “I like the way that you’re cleaning up” might be motivating for the child who is performing the behavior that’s being praised, but what about the child who doesn’t hear their name? How does it feel for Amy to hear “I like the way that Jenny is ____” over and over, but not hear her own name?

Even if all the children were praised equally, this saying still focuses on praise to motivate “good” behavior, and to manipulate the other children to behave a certain way. Children shouldn’t do things to get praise from the teacher. As Alfie Kohn has written about extensively, teaching children to respond to praise is a manipulative practice that doesn’t lead to long term results.

Another way: A more emotionally honest approach is to acknowledge children with specific feedback for their behavior. “Jenny, thank you for sitting down so the people behind you can see.” “You’re being responsible by cleaning up the toys that you took out.” These phrases help children understand the effects that their behavior has on those around them, instead of reacting to praise.

2. “I need you to….”

Years ago, I was taught that I should give directions in the form “I need you to…” because this is less directive than a command. After many years of saying this, it doesn’t seem less directive at all. The words may say “I need you to pick up the blocks”, but in my position as the teacher, I’m not actually giving a choice. “I need you to” really means “I want you to” or “I expect you to” or “You have to”, and the children know that. This is another emotionally dishonest and somewhat manipulative phrase. If I say “I need you to pick up your toys”, I’m not being entirely honest, because I don’t actually “need” that. And, this is another example of manipulating children to base their behavior on what will please the teacher, instead of on what should be done out of a sense of community or shared responsibility.

Another way: Be honest and genuine when you talk about your feelings. Adults’ use of terms like “I need” and “I want” are models for children as they learn to talk about their own needs and wants. Give authentic reasons for what you’re asking children to do. “I’m going to ask you to sweep the sand that you spilled on the floor.” “We’re all having snack now, I’ll help you find a place at the table.” Linking directions with reasons for the directions help children develop a sense of responsibility and self-regulation.

3. “We’re all friends at school.”

I struggle with this one a lot – using the word “friend” when I really mean “child.” In our desire to model inclusiveness and friendship, and our fear of bullying, teachers use a lot of language referring to everyone as friends. But saying that everyone is friends diminishes the real meaning of what friendship is. And it prevents children from expressing their feelings about different people. Children can be expected to act politely or civilly to each other, to work together and cooperate, but we should not expect them to be friends with every person in the class. Also, when children say that someone isn’t their friend, there’s usually an underlying issue going on between those children that needs to be addressed, not dismissed.

Another way: Use words like “children” or “everyone” or other inclusive terms that don’t imply a specific relationship between people in the class. Respond to statements like “You’re not my friend” by trying to figure out what the underlying issue is, and help the children to work out the problem, instead of only focusing on the words they’re saying to each other.

4. “The More We Get Together the Happier We’ll Be.”

Many classrooms songs convey messages that we might not actually say to children in conversation. Like the statement about friends in #3, songs like “The More We Get Together” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lldmkrJXQ-E or that have lyrics like “We’re all in our places with bright shiny faces” dictate to children how they are expected to feel at school. The good intention of building classroom community by singing these welcome songs also carries the message that children aren’t allowed to have negative feelings about school, be unhappy there, or not want to be friends with the other children.

Another way: Think about the words of the songs that you use, and choose songs that have authentic messages about feelings and emotions. For example, a song that has the teacher welcoming the children, or the teacher saying “I’m so glad you’re here” sounds more honest than the teacher saying that all the children are happy to be there.

5. “You can’t say you can’t play”.

As a way to prevent bullying and exclusion, we often insist that children play with anyone who wants to play with them. As well meaning as this seems, telling children that they have to play with anyone – or let anyone join in their play – removes their choices about who they spend time with and how they spend their time. If we believe that “play is children’s work”, by dictating children’s play partners, we are interfering with their planning and decision processes about that work. As adults, most of us would resent it if a friend or co-worker insisted on telling us the solutions to crossword puzzle, or walked into our kitchen and started adding ingredients what we’re cooking. A child not allowing others to join in might just be protecting their own work space.

There’s also the issue of how controlling children’s choice of play partners teaches them about consent. When we tell children that they have to play with someone, we could be preventing them from bullying, but we’re also teaching them not to say no to bullies in the future. If we want to raise children who have the confidence to express their opinions and choices, especially when exposed to social pressure, we need to respect their choices of who to play with.

Another way: Respect children’s choices, but also model positive social interactions. Teachers can model inclusiveness by inviting children who don’t usually play with each other to join in an activity initiated by the teacher. If a child seems to be avoiding or excluding a peer, try to figure out the reason behind it, and find ways to alter the environment or materials to encourage these children to be more comfortable playing with each other.

If our goal is for children to develop social and emotional competency, and to be able to honestly express their feelings in a constructive way, then we need to provide environments that encourage children to do this. Teachers should say what we mean, and respect children’s rights to express their emotions in the classroom.

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.

Circle Time and Distractions

In my classroom, the schedule always includes an additional act between clean-up time and sitting down for circle time. The teachers cover the shelves of toys to indicate that the toys are put away (or “resting” or “closed”) during circle time. I’ve been doing this for years, in different age groups, and in different schools. I always thought of this as helping the children to self-regulate. If free play isn’t an available choice, then the toys shouldn’t look like they’re available. Covering them prevents the problem of having to interrupt circle time to stop a child from fiddling with a toy on a nearby shelf. I always thought of the shelf covers as a useful visual cue to remind children that “the toys are closed.”

I never stopped to wonder why I want the toys to be “closed” in the first place.

I’ve had many discussions with other teachers over the years about what is allowed behavior at and during circle time. All toys in the room must be put away, including loveys and items from home. Sometimes children must put away their hats, bracelets, barrettes. Children must sit on their bottoms and not touch the child next to them, even to hold hands. The common reason behind all of these limits is that those behaviors - holding a toy, holding a friend’s hand, fiddling with one’s bracelet or hat, are “distractions.”

Distractions from what?

Distractions from listening to the teacher. Because that is what circle time is usually about, even in play-based preschools with emergent curriculum and child-directed play throughout the rest of the day. As soon as circle time starts, the power, control, and decision making rest squarely in the teacher. What songs to sing, games to play, books to read (or, more accurately, to listen to) are the teacher’s choice. For years, circle time was when I put on my performance - reading, singing, dancing, all with children’s involvement, but with me leading the show. The children’s job at circle time was to follow my lead and do what I’ve decided they should do. I cover up the toys to hide any distractions that will keep them from doing anything but participate in the activity that I chose.

But if my activity is so engaging, why I am I worried about distractions?

Whenever we worry that something will be a distraction, we’re saying that that object, conversation, or idea will interfere in what the adults have dictated will happen next. Which often is what circle time is. The rationale for a distinct circle time that all the children are present at is usually has to do with “learning to come together as a group” or “being part of the classroom community.” But if a child would rather look at a book independently, or do a puzzle, or draw, and we compel that child to be physically present at circle time, that doesn’t build community.

There are all sorts of times for coming together in my classroom, and I’ve often found the richest are ones that weren’t scripted or planned. When I start reading a book, I usually find half the class or more coming over to hear the story. When I turn on music and start to dance, or take out musical instruments, sometimes the entire class stops building, drawing, or playing with other toys to join in. If I start to sing a rhyming song or ABC’s, I can hear voices singing along with me all over the classroom while they continue their play. If the activity is meaningful to and engaging for the children, I don’t need to compel them to participate, and I don’t need to worry about them being distracted.

If I’m worried that the children could get distracted so easily, perhaps I should consider whether what I’m doing is all that engaging in the first place.

Leaving Room For Wonder

Walking through the park one morning, I noticed a few bricks red bricks peeking up through the grass. Taking a closer look, I noticed a line of bricks. Then, further on, I saw there were actually two rows of red bricks, buried or covered by grass in some places, a brick or two missing in others, stretching through the park.

What were they once a part of?

I had never walked this way before, or at least not in a long time, and couldn’t remember having seen them before. Were they part of an old path? That seemed the most logical answer. But then why were the bricks only in lines, without anything in the middle? Could this be the remnant of some structure? I thought briefly about taking out my smart phone and googling my question – no doubt someone had already asked and answered it before. But it was a beautiful day, and I wanted to enjoy the walk, not stand in the park staring at my phone.

I decided that I’d look up the answer later – maybe there was information on the historical society website, or if not, I could post my question on a “forgotten history” or local architecture forum and get a quick answer. I continued my walk, thinking and wondering about the rows of bricks that continued in uneven and broken rows through the grass. The discovery of the unexpected started my mind wandering, and wondering. What other mysterious objects might I discover? After a while I noticed several half buried bricks in the area around a bench, and then around a tree. Eventually, I found a spot in the park where the bricks clearly formed an intersection of what must have once been paths, now abandoned. But I continued to wonder. Why had these paths been designed this way? And how did they fall into disuse? Why were the bricks so prominent in some places, yet buried in others?

What if I had been on a walk with children when I had noticed these bricks? Perhaps I might have said, “I wonder why these bricks are here?” and used their observations as some starting point for a project or exploration in the classroom. And I might have worked with them to help them discover the answer to their question, in an open-ended, child directed way that allowed the children to take ownership over their own problem solving.

But why does every problem need to be solved?

Problem solving, making observations, forming hypotheses, gathering data, and evaluating the results are important skills. Logical and scientific thinking are essential components of cognitive development and school success. But when we view every question as a vehicle for scientific discovery, or a problem to be solved, we lose a spark of our creativity and imagination. We lose the ability to wonder. “Wonder” becomes just one more step in a science experiment.

But what about wondering for its own sake? Not to generate hypotheses or to find answers. We live in a world where the answers can be at our fingertips at any moment, a world where children are taught that they can discover the answer to any question, whether through their own explorations, or through a few clicks on a screen. We need to help children hold on to some moments of wonder, some moments where children are allowed the experience of wondering for its own sake, to turn questions over and over in their minds without knowing the answer. And perhaps never knowing the answer. The drive to wonder, to think, to pretend, to imagine is as crucial a part of our cognitive make up as the drive to discover. We need to leave room to wonder.

Image by © Robert Llewellyn/Corbis

Pegboards, Pipe Cleaners, and Emergent Curriculum

Last week I posted a photo of an activity involving pipe cleaners and pegboards. Someone asked me how I came up with the idea to set up those materials in that way. The initial inspiration came from observing the children’s activities and interests. My job was to provide the materials for them to put their ideas into action.

In my two-year-old room, we have sheer fabric pieces hanging from the back of a shelving unit, with the intention that children will use them to hide, play peek-a-boo, or just explore the color and texture of the material. I hung these fabric pieces by cutting small holes in them, stringing pipe cleaners through the holes and attaching them to the pegboard back of the shelves.

One day one of the fabric pieces came loose and fell off. Some of the children watched with interest as I worked to reattach it. They wanted to help, and I gave them pipe cleaners that they could put through the back of the shelving unit, but the depth of the shelves made that hard for them to do. Plus most of the pegboard was covered in fabric, so it was hard for them to find where the holes were. So my co-teacher and I used our observations of the children’s activity to arrange an environment where they could explore these materials.

We had some small pieces of pegboard (that we had used in the sensory table), but we needed a way to stand them up. We taped one pegboard to two large hollow blocks and placed a basket of pipe cleaners nearby. Just as we expected, the children continued the activity they had begun while trying to help me fix the curtain, stringing and pushing the pipe cleaners in and out of the holes in the pegboard. Unfortunately, the tape didn’t hold, and the board fell over. We needed a new plan.

The next day, we didn’t set the pegboard in a standing position, but left it stacked with the other blocks. One of the children tried to stand it up, and it just happened to slide right into the slot along the middle of the block, which kept it firmly in place. Probably without realizing it, she had found a solution to the problem.

Several weeks passed, and we decided to set up the pegboards again in a focal part of the room, to see if any of the children would be interested. This time, we arranged the blocks so we could slide a pegboard into the slots, just as we had observed a child do accidentally before. We placed a basket of pipe cleaners nearby. The children had also recently been exploring flashlights, so we placed those nearby as well, wondering whether children would shine those on and through the pegboards.

 The placement of the peg boards in a prominent area of the room, in a physically stable way, encouraged children to explore the materials. Not only was this activity based on the children’s emergent interests, it also involved a variety of early learning objectives: fine motor coordination, color sorting, comparison of size and length, and social interaction as the children slid the pipe cleaners back and forth to each other through the holes. Through intentional planning, we were able to plan an meaningful activity based on the children's interests.