Logo

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.

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.

A title in the Learning Moments series

When children play outdoors, we expect them to run, jump, and stretch beyond what is possible in the classroom. For this reason we often treat outdoor play as a time for gross motor play, group games, and sports. Teachers less often consider the high level thinking that occurs outdoors as children solve problems, negotiate rules, construct with loose parts, and figure out how to navigate changes in the terrain.

A title in the Learning Moments series

Two infants, a boy in blue and a girl in red, discover the joy of disappearing and re-appearing on opposite sides of a climb-through tunnel. First, think from the girl’s perspective. She stoops down, the ready position. If the boy is also down, she does not pop up. She looks through the tunnel, and when she sees that he has risen to a standing position, she pops up with a squeal, as if she appreciates how he can see her re-appear and how he might be surprised.

Four children, each a little over a year old, sit around a square table, covered with white paper onto which a video projector casts lights from a computer. The lights change pattern in sync with music. The children do not control the movement of the lights, but at times they think that they do. This set-up, flowing light patterns on a tabletop, generates an uncommon form of play with lights. The children splash and smear the light as if it were a moveable medium, such as water or finger paint. We need to understand why this happens.

Why put two lids together? What drives this action? This one-year-old child is probably not sorting the lids by color or size, but rather has some purpose that causes her to persist at some moves and avoid others. Watch to see if she is trying to insert one lid into the other, trying to sandwich two lids into a pair that she can hold as a unit, trying to make the lids align in a stack or simply trying to create a condensed pile. Notice when she changes her mind and moves a lid from one place to another. What does the new placement offer that the previous placement lacks?

A faceted mirror ball sprays rays of light throughout the room, radiating outward from the ball, but only when the ball is placed in the path of sunlight one sees as a bright panel on the floor. Carter created this effect just before the clip began. The action picks up with Carter saying, “Where’d go?” holding his palms up in a questioning gesture. He holds the mirror ball and has stepped out of the path of sunlight. The question itself indicates that Carter wonders if these delightful spots of light will return. He searches with his eyes, sees a single spot, and points to it.

Listen to the child’s explanation of his map. His uses his map as a hybrid of storyboard and spatial notation. For example, the three rocks on 8th Street become the protagonist in the child’s story. They serve as a spatial point of reference, a challenge for breaking through them, an obstacle to hurdle to get across the empty space on the map to the closest street mark, and something that is known only to people who have actually been “on” 8th Street.

Imagine a child’s joy at discovering a constant, localized wind, aka a fan. Watch Owen explore this controlled event to figure out the boundaries and intensity of its effects. He feels the wind on his face and realizes the source of this invisible force. At first he approaches the front of the fan with one hand, palm parallel to the grill barrier over the blades. As the cool force hits his palm, he smiles at his teacher, communicating his joy.