Logo

In this video clip, Sohum, 20 months old, attempts to stand three thin square blocks in a row, like dominoes, an arrangement he has just finished building with ease, announcing loudly as he stands (00:22) with words to the effect, "I did that!" At 00:48, Sohum’s legs tire of squatting, so he continues his building in the sitting position. From this point forward, Sohum’s legs become an impediment. Each time he moves to reach for a new block, he knocks the standing blocks down.

Stories are different from descriptions. How can a teacher support the child trying to learn the elements that define a story, such as sequenced events that are caused by one another or that set the conditions for what follows? A child might draw a single picture and then use it to tell a story. "This is the princess locked in the tower. She gets out of that tiny window." The single picture helps the child remember the story, but as a single symbol to be read by others it only captures the condition of being in the tower, not the sequence of locked in and escaped out.

We often think that touch, taste, and feel give the infant the information needed to distinguish the real from the not real, say a photograph of a ball versus a three dimensional sphere. The photograph looks like a ball, but you can’t pick it up or throw it, so it is not a real ball. For the moment, let’s think about the importance of looking, which after all creates the wonder in the first place. What is this thing I see? If the infant wonders, then the touch, heft, and taste serve to answer the question, as opposed to creating the question. Sometimes the answer comes from more looking.

In this video, the children decide to act out the emergence of plants from the earth. They gather under a brown blanket meant to represent the dirt in a garden and listen for the music to guide them to grow. “Soon, the music will tell your body what to do, and it might tell your voice what to do as well. Just listen,” their teacher explains. The children are patient and listen to the music. As the music crescendos Lara begins to “grow” but stops when she notices her friends are not. They rise from the “ground” together and use their bodies to represent the plants.

Truman places objects in Abby's hands. Shall we treat this encounter as a sweet moment of fun, or consider the regularity of Truman's actions as a foundation for logic. Let’s see what yields when we describe his action as rules, similar to the "if - then" logic of computer programming or any well stated set of instructions (see J. Langer, 1982).

Two boys, almost three, spend 15 minutes of playing with small toy cars. Can we find value in such ordinary moments, that is, from a learning perspective? One hears general claims about learning to play together, taking turns, pretending, being creative, and figuring out inclines. Too often the claims are not mapped to specific actions; they are simply made as if common sense. Even if these claims do make sense, we still do not know what any of them mean unless we use actual behaviors to define them.

This video clip begins with three children and two adults exploring MadPad™, an iPad app that allows children to create sound tracks to a set of twelve images arranged in a 3 by 4 matrix. The children can use the front video camera on the iPad to create a short video of themselves making sounds, or they can use the rear camera to take snap shots or video clips to go with sounds. When they touch any one of the twelve images, the respective audio loop plays once. The app also includes a large number of prefabricated images with sounds that the children can touch.

A title in the Learning Moments series

A title in the Learning Moments series

As two infants sit across from each other, notice that the boy seems to be calling the girl in some way. He’s excited to see her, so he waves his arms. He’s not necessarily trying to get her to do what he does. Perhaps, like a hand wave, he wants her to know that he recognizes her. His actions may be a precursor to a more formal social greeting. Notice how the boy pauses his action as if waiting for the girl to respond by doing something. The girl replies by waving her arms. Her arm waving is imitative.