Click on thumbnail to watch inside our video library. Young children often imitate an action that they see. This action could be an early form of representation; that is, making a symbol that “stands for” a referent that happened in the immediate past. By imitating the event, the child in a sense “puts a handle” on the event so that she can mentally “grasp” it. Using two short clips, we have added more granularity to these metaphors. The text first describes what occurred, and then in italics presents our interpretation of what the child and the teacher might have been thinking, not literally as explicit thoughts, but rather as some intuitive level of their intentions.

00:03
The teacher spins a lid like a top. Blake, 14 months, sees the spin, rocks his shoulders back and forth while looking at teacher. [I want to share with you the excitement of this movement. I will move my body back and forth and look at you to see if you too are excited. My movement is my way of letting you know what it is in the world that excites me.]
00:04
The teacher looks at Blake, who is rocking back and forth. She rocks back and forth, while maintaining steady eye contact with Blake [I see you rocking. I know you are trying to share something with me. I will rock just like you are rocking to let you know that I understand you are sharing a referent (the spinning) with me.]
00:08
The teacher spins the lid again. Blake smiles and looks up at the teacher. Almost at the exact same time, Blake and the teacher rock their shoulders as they maintain steady eye contact with each other. The rocking is now the game: look at the spinning lid, look at the teacher (child) immediately, and rock your shoulders back and forth. [Blake: There is the spin. I need to look at the teacher quickly to see if she is looking back at me. I will rock back and forth to see if she will rock back and forth. We are playing a game.] [Teacher: I will rock back and forth when Blake looks at me. Perhaps he will know that I am doing the same thing that he is doing. That will augment the strength of his feeling that we are sharing ].
00:16
Blake moves to catch the spinning lid. He misses. Then he moves his hand back and forth. [Blake: This thing was moving when I tried to grab it. I will move my hand to indicate that the movement of this thing was what I noticed most ]. The teacher makes a circular movement with her finger and says, “Yes it does go round and round and round.” Blake watches her finger intently. [Teacher: Perhaps if I move my hand in a circular way and say round and round, Blake will associate the words with the shape of the movement. My gesture might help him "abstract," from all the many things he sees, the event that I am speaking about. I am not certain that he will think of the lid going round and round, but at the very least he might think that the words are related to the shape of my gesture].
00:20
The teacher spins the lid for a third time, but it does not spin well. When the lid falls, the teacher says, “Oops, silly.” Blake looks up at the teacher when she speaks but does not rock his shoulders back and forth. [Teacher: I want Blake to know that I did not expect the lid to fall, that this time the lid "did not work." It is important for children to classify events as either "done well" or "done poorly." This might help him to think about why ].
00:26
Blake throws the lid to the floor; it does not spin on its vertical axis, but it does rotate rapidly on its circumference. When it stops, he smiles and rocks back and forth while still looking at the lid. He vocalizes an expression of joy. [Blake: I know that movement. It is not exactly the same as before, but it is a movement that continues after I let go of the object. It is a movement that stays mostly in one place. To indicate what I abstract from what is going on around me, I will rock back and forth. I am moving in a way similar to the movement of that thing in front of me. That similarity makes me smile ].
00:31
The teacher spins another lid, smaller and silver. Blake watches this lid spin but does not wait for it to come to a stop. He crawls away from the play space toward another part of the room. [Teacher: It might be useful for Blake to see that the spinning action is not inherent to a particular object, but rather can be created using different objects that have the same basic round and flat shape ]. [Blake: Okay, I have seen this movement before. I would like to go elsewhere and do something new ].

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Click on thumbnail to watch inside our video library. Children, when in the comfortable presence of a loving adult, will allow themselves to go with the flow of spontaneous ideas while telling a story and even explain their story when asked. In this particular episode, Milena’s mom asks Milena to clarify story elements Milena has offered. Milena, who just turned four years old, knows the game and can switch back and forth between describing the events of the story and explaining her choices to her mom. Some of her remarks tell the story of swimming underwater and riding a dolphin. Some of her comments explain the motive or meaning of what she has already said. The combination of her creative imagery and her meta-linguistic comments makes this experience a learning encounter, an encounter that fosters Milena’s language development. She imagines, “I put on my sunglasses (probably means goggles), and they are going to stay on me, and they are gonna go under here (gestures around back of her head), and I am going under the water and swim in the deepest water.” She explains, “Far away means nobody is there.”

Via her mother’s questions she learns to think about the story as a structure with a beginning and ending; a story that is finished or not finished. She learns to think of genre: scary story, happy story, or short story. She knows that stories have openings, but the opening itself is not the story (“No, you’re supposed to tell it (the story),” she tells her mom who stopped after saying, “Once upon a time.”). She learns how to extend the complexity of a story by adding a second character (Mom asks, “And Buyla (grandmother) will jump in the water too?). She is asked to consider how one event precipitates the next event (Mom asks, “So how can she get a ride then?”). She learns how to find dramatic tension by focusing on elements of danger (Mom asks, “And then you’re going to swim… how far?).

Watch the video and listen for the comments from Milena’s mom. Notice how she adds voice quality when repeating Milena’s scary story, adding expressivity to the story telling. Consider how she helps Milena think about the concept of story. She co-constructs the story with Milena by offering specific suggestions, not simply saying to Milena, “Tell me more.” Here is a sample of her questions during this story telling encounter.

00:06 And what should we do (next)?

00:40 And Buyla (grandmother) will jump in the water too?

01:03 And Buyla with be right there with you, right, swimming?

01:09 What if you meet a dolphin? What would you do?

01:26 If you go on the dolphin, what would Buyla go on, a whale?

01:38 So how can she get a ride then (if the whale swallows Buyla)?

01:50 And then you’re going to swim…. how far?

02:00 Do you know what’s far away?

02:21 And what do you do if someone is not there?

02:30 And will that be the end of the story or only the beginning of the story?

03:48 Oh, that’s a very happy story.

03:53 What’s so scary about that story?

04:29 And he was afraid of the ghost and what’s next?

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Click on thumbnail to watch inside our video library. Watch this 2-year-old child explore the buttons on a music synthesizer and take note of what she learns about the conditional logic of the button functions; that is, how the lower button, B will turn on the drum cadence or turn it off but only if the power button, A is in the “on” position. We can define this conditional logic as follows: If A is x then B can be x or y. If A is y then B can only be y. By reflecting carefully on her play she discovers this conditional function (B’s function is conditional on, or determined by, the settings on A).

Piaget would call this video an example of “self-regulated learning.” We should not reduce this form of learning to the common phrase “trial and error.” To the child’s credit she understands which “trials” will give her the most information. So her trials are not random. What she decides to try comes from her assumptions about possible patterns, possible contingencies.

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Notes from the Field

Boulder Journey School early childhood educator, Alex Cruickshank, recently shared her views on the current state of education in the US. Her riveting speech was presented to an audience of 1,700 at a TEDxBoulder event that was held on the University of Colorado Boulder campus. TEDxBoulder organizers, recognizing the relevance of Alex’s message, rewarded her with a donation of $1000, payable to Hawkins Centers of Learning, a non-profit organization that inspires educators world-wide. To view this presentation, click here.

Click on thumbnail to watch inside our video library. Young children will understand a book, as a cultural artifact, at different levels. We might call these early levels a form of pre-literacy. Is a book an interestingly hinged object to fold open and shut or pages that carry information in a sequence? Are the color patterns pretty decorations or pictures that refer to real things? Does the cover of a book have a different purpose than the inside of the book?

What actions do we look for to answer some of these questions? This clip shows two children at slightly different levels of treating a book as more than a physical object. The young girl finds the side of the book that allows her to pry it open. She does not try to pry it open from the spine. Notice how she lifts the open book toward her face and utters a sound (00:09). Is this sound an imitation of what she has seen others do, or is she expressing her recognition of a picture? Her line of gaze seems to be directed more at the blue on the page of print. As she continues to open pages she takes less and less time to process what is printed on the pages. As she switches to a second book we credit her again with knowing how to search for the side that opens. But instead of studying the pictures on the page, she tries to lift an edge with her thumb (00:26). She works to turn the pages and even over-applies this goal when she gets to the picture glued to the front of the book (00:52). When this picture resists folding over she reverses her strategy and folds the adjacent page toward the front (01:00). We can credit her with knowing how a book works as a physical object, but we have little reason to conclude that she is thinking that a book carries information. The teacher captions the picture, “a duck.” This labeling of the pictures will eventually help the child treat books as a source of information.

The young boy’s actions are rather different. He opens a new page, pauses, and looks at the pictures for a few seconds. Notice that at 02:16, when he sees the picture of a gorilla, he recognizes that the same picture appears on the cover. He flips the pages to reveal the cover, confirming his observation. He leaves his thumb in the place he left, perhaps as a way to more easily return to the interior page containing the gorilla’s picture.

He makes some vocalizations that are punctuated to match the full opening of a new page, as if he knows that this is what you do to introduce new information on a new page. He goes both forward and backward through the book, so he probably does not know that pages are turned from right to left for a reason. Each new page has something new to see and study, but he does not value the sequence. When he finishes turning all the pages from back to front, he goes back the other way. But he does not try to turn just one page at a time(03:14) as he did when he went from back to front. Perhaps he simply does not want to miss viewing any of the pictures. It is unlikely that he knows that a story has a sequence.

The early strategies described above are more than imitations to be forgotten as the child learns to read. They are components of the conventions that make books work: searching for the edge that is not hinged; turning one page at a time; turning from front to back only; pausing to scan the visual patterns on the page; treating the cover as a clue for the contents, and eventually using the sequence of the pages as relevant to the meaning of the presentation.

Runtime 4 minutes 2 seconds

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Click on thumbnail to watch inside our video library. Truman, 11 months, rotates, probes, and rubs a white shell. Let’s try and figure out what he might be thinking. By reading his actions as high level thinking we reveal the incredible intelligence manifest during the first year of life, intelligence that is sadly often reduced to phrases like “hand-eye coordination” or “using the five senses.” This shell has two contrasting sides, one convex, one concave; one smooth, the other ribbed. Watch this video and decide if you agree that Truman is actually comparing these two sides. In other words, is he thinking how one side is not like the other?

00:06 Truman turns the shell over, convex side facing him. He pushes on the surface with his right thumb. This occurs immediately after he looks into the concave side of the shell and probes its depth with his right index finger. These two actions look like a pair, one done because of the other, one done to see how it differs from the other. These actions confirm that this paradoxical object is both convex and concave.

00:12 During these six seconds he flips the shell several times, looking at it, perhaps confirming that the differences he feels with his fingers are corroborated by what he sees.

00:20 The camera zooms in to capture the small movements of his fingers. He presses hard on the shell with both thumbs, pressing on the relief created by a ribbing on the convex surface of the shell.

00:38 He changes his firm press downward into a sort of scraping over the ribbed surface of the shell. In this manner he gathers more information about the texture of the ribbing on the shell.

He frequently changes which side is up by pronating his wrist. 00:24 and 00:43 During these inversions, his finger tips are more fully in contact with the smooth inside of the shell. While we do not know if this contrast has entered his thinking, we do know that his hands have created this contrast for him to use. Much of early learning results coincidental to unintentional events. These events, once created, move into the consciousness of the child who subsequently makes the effect happen again with forethought.

At 00:48 we witness another contrast. His right hand releases his grip on the shell while his left hand holds it securely. At this moment, notice how he flexes his fingers, as if to say, “I have nothing in my right hand.” He has discovered the contrast between the substantial and the non-substantial.

Watch the rest of the clip and think about what you see this child do that reveals what he might be thinking. Place this thinking both in terms of what he discovers that the shell is and what he determines the shell (or a side) is not. The emergence of the concept “not,” as in “not smooth” serves as a foundation for even more abstract thinking. This way of marking development represents so much more than learning that something is smooth. Indeed, smooth itself has little meaning if it remains alone rather than compared to something that is not smooth. Paradoxically, a comparison, literally, is not “in” the shell but created by the working intelligence of a child. How can the senses feel something that is not literally there? They don’t. The child’s intelligence constructs a relation between the sensations.

Runtime 2 minutes 2 seconds

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Click on thumbnail to watch inside our video library. The pre-kindergarten class featured in this video has been investigating several musical concepts for several months. In this experience, Jack is conducting his classmates in a drum ensemble. Before the video begins, the children were all playing the drums at the same time and were expressing frustration about being heard. Jack and his friend came up with a solution that the class agreed upon. Each person would be assigned a number, and when his/her number was called, it would be his/her turn to play. When children develop their own system of rules, are they more invested in following them? Notice how all of the drummers are engaged and responding to Jack’s instruction as they wait for their number to be called. Jack then uses the numbers to conduct, rather than his voice. Was this another rule created by the children to move the focus back to the sound of the drum? By giving Jack the numbers, we hear only the sounds of the drums being played.

Notice that Jack not only holds up a number, he also extends it forward as if to signal “hit now.” The children spontaneously invent a game of beating Jack to his signal. They hit their respective drums at the first indication of what number he is about to lift. They laugh. Perhaps waiting for their number, or anyone’s number, has become too much to ask six drummers, in spite of the impulse control they have shown up to this point. Also, because Jack holds up only one number at a time, drums with different tonal values are never hit at the same time.

Their impatience could actually be the catalyst for new rules about how they use these numbers. Let’s assume the teacher comments on how long they have to wait and suggests they invent new rules that bring more drumming into play. The children might suggest Jack hold up more than one number. If this is cumbersome, the teacher might offer to make more than one copy of each number and put Velcro on the backs of the copies, so they stick to a vertical fabric board.

Once the children see their numbers lined up, maybe even some on top of another (simultaneous hits), it would be reasonable to assume they would see the potential of spacing the numbers at different intervals, thereby capturing not only the sequence of the drum hits, but also the interval of time between hits. Now, the children have reinvented the beat. This real episode and its imagined extensions provide us with a wonderful example of constructivist teaching, where children invent and reinvent symbolic rules because they have experienced the problems one has without them. To understand is to invent a solution to a problem one has experienced.

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Click on thumbnail to watch inside our video library. Physics can surprise us when a condition exists that we do not consider. In this video a child balances log cross-sections on a board that rests on a large curved block. Because the pivot is not a point, but rather a curve, it is possible for the boy to balance unequal weights. The physics has not changed. The round block underneath, in essence, changes the location of the fulcrum. The length of the board to the right of the fulcrum becomes longer (by tilting upward) if he places more weight on the left side of the board. The curved board automatically adjusts the position of the fulcrum to create balance between the amount of weight per side and the amount of distance to the fulcrum.

We can use these anomalous set-ups to study, in a casual and playful way, the nature of the child’s surprise. A young child might simply think, “These blocks are different” and continue to play without much surprise at all. But when children begin to develop the idea that nature has some fairly reliable rules, this set-up can cause discomfort or curiosity.

Do you think the boy in this video finds it curious that most of his weight arrangements find their own equilibrium, even when he has only one weight on one side and nothing on the other? He talks about a weight that “holds it up” and for some reason adds a third weight directly in the middle. The teacher puts his strategy into words (Timecode 00:41). Is he thinking about the weight in the middle pressing down the way one might do with a finger to keep something steady? Notice when the boy puts a rather large weight on the right, and the board still finds a point of equilibrium (Timecode 00:47). How would you judge his reaction? Is he surprised in a strong way or a mild way? Why do you think the boy deliberately makes the blocks “all fall down” (Timecode 02:03)? What information might this give him, or what goal might this satisfy?

Watch the entire clip and think about the boy’s thinking. Is he testing out ideas? What are his ideas? Of course, the big question occurs to us: Do you think this set-up can teach the boy something new about fulcrums, or is it more likely to confuse the boy about how a balance beam works (such as knowing how a light-weight girl can see-saw with a heavier boy by sliding back on her side of the see saw)? Would you give the child a different set-up the next day? What new set up might make sense?
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Click on thumbnail to watch inside our video library. When the teacher sings word-like sounds to Blake (10 months old), he orients more intently to the teacher. Notice how the teacher first invites Blake to make the same sounds she does. Then she elevates the invitation to consider that the word “ball” refers to the object she moves gently in her hand. By shifting back and forth between the game of “make my sounds” and “this object is called a ball” Blake might soon use the word “ball” himself in reference to the object. There is one place where Blake holds the ball up to the teacher, as if to invite her to share in his attention. Perhaps this is the beginning of shared reference, the first component of using a word to communicate to someone else the presence of a known object.

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Click on thumbnail to watch inside our video library. The video begins when Travis jumps high from a log in the room to touch a picture hanging from the ceiling. He is quite proud of this physical feat, and the teacher, although concerned about the fragile photo, wants him to feel the full joy of his success. So by degrees she suggests that Travis think about what might happen to the photo. She shifts his attention from his jump to the photo, pointing out that it is now swinging, thinking he might consider the possibility that it could tear. He does not pick up on this indirect hint; so the teacher adds on his next jump, “Look how much it is swinging. I hope it doesn’t break.” She could have just said, “Don’t break it Travis.” Instead, she chooses her words carefully, giving Travis every opportunity to think things through himself. Indeed, she turns the hard thinking over to Travis on almost every choice point. Following are other examples of her thoughtful choice of words.

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Click on thumbnail to watch inside our video library. Infants explore their world continually during their waking hours: pushing, pulling, poking, prodding. Why do some events capture their interests and cause them to make that event occur again and again? It behooves parents and teachers to consider that infants’ interests emanate from profound sources, some built into our specie, some developed from previous experiences. Watch this clip of an infant pushing and pulling and scraping objects attached to a wall. These objects move and also make sounds. We can say more than “the child is learning about cause and effect.” That phrase explains nothing because it is too general, like saying, “The child is learning about life.” We can speculate on the relations among the infant’s body, the shape/location of the object, the ease and reliability of making a particular effect happen again, and so forth. But more than all of this, we should speculate on why the child makes a choice to repeat some effects and not others and why the child, to recreate that effect, uses one strategy rather than another. These speculations move us closer to understanding how children think. Choices are made for reasons, and these reasons define infant intelligence. Let’s begin.

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