Stacking Tires

Price: 
$10.00
Delivery Method: 

Having a strong goal becomes the catalyst for invention for Jensen, a five-year-old intent on building stacks made of heavy automobile tires. We see her anticipate how high to lift a tire as she moves it closer to her growing stack. We see how she invents the strategy of rolling the heavier tires, instead of dragging them; how she counts to calculate her progress; and how she uses tires both as objects to stack and as stools to help her stack.

Watch how Jensen marks the intended use of a tire. Knowing that she has to leave the stack to get a tire to stand on, she leans the tire to be lifted against the existing stack. She goes to the supply of tires, rolls one close to the stack, and then begins to heft the waiting tire. While leaning the tire may seem like an insignificant detail, she has in essence said, "This is not the tire I will stand on, but the one that I will lift." Does Jensen anticipate that when she gets two tires side by side it might be difficult to know which one she intended to lift? Perhaps that's why she "marked" the tire by leaning it upright.

Children not only solve problems; they also invent strategies for solving them more effectively as they play. Of course the right objects help, such as a dozen car tires on the playground.

Keywords: Fives, Tires, Child-Object, Spatial Relations, Invention, Goal Marking, videative

Length of videative: 12 paragraphs, 8 video subclips
Length of stand-alone master video clip: 6 minutes, 20 seconds