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Golden and Emma are playing a game of checkers. Golden is teaching Emma how to play. Notice how patient and flexible he is as he tries to explain the rules and she doesn’t quite follow. Golden seems to demonstrate an understanding that Emma is making sense of the game in her own way. Notice the different ways he scaffolds her learning. For example, at 1:53, he deliberately moves his black chip next to her red chip in order to show her how to jump.

Lincoln and Golden, two toddlers, are working to arrange tiles on the floor and count them. Golden uses strategies to help him count effectively. The boy locates the first tile in the series to begin counting (00:03). Golden tries to say one number word for each tile he points to but does not point to the sixth tile, saying "six" on the seventh when pointing to the seventh. He has the right idea but his hand just gets ahead of the count. Then he double counts the eighth tile after bumping it and coincidently gets back on an accurate count.

Listen to Hunter explain the rain cycle as he points to his drawing. Quite often, and in this episode as well, children add new twists to their theories AFTER they draw an event. The elements of the drawing, the mountain, the moving clouds, the teacher's question about what makes the clouds start to rain, were not yet parts of an integrated theory of what causes what. As children navigate their drawings in the context of trying to explain how things work, they invent solutions.

Listen to Hunter explain the rain cycle as he points to his drawing. Quite often, and in this episode as well, children add new twists to their theories AFTER they draw an event. The elements of the drawing, the mountain, the moving clouds, the teacher's question about what makes the clouds start to rain, were not yet parts of an integrated theory of what causes what. As children navigate their drawings in the context of trying to explain how things work, they invent solutions.

In this video clip, Jordan and her friends discover that an umbrella is better when shared. Jordan (heart coat) understands that the value of an umbrella is increased when it’s raining, and as the umbrella holder, she too gains social importance. Unlike a raincoat, the umbrella is unique in that its design accommodates more than one child at a time. Jordan learns that she can continue to enjoy the umbrella while choosing to also extend its benefit to others. Throughout the episode the children construct several different relationships around this ordinary, everyday object.

In this video clip, the children’s relaxed, patient and confident participation in sharing time shows that this is a well-established classroom routine. The clear structure of this social event helps the children understand the roles of the participants and join in with success. The sense of routine offers the children reassurance that they will have a turn to talk and facilitates their active engagement in the present.

Let’s listen to how three girls talk "science" as they use eyedroppers to create colored liquids. The close proximity of the girls, each with her own eyedropper, making new colors that are under-lit by the overhead projector - all of these factors support thinking out loud as they express their surprise, their predictions, and their methods of making new colors. The teacher poses interesting questions to help the children reflect on what was done and what could be done during this investigation of mixing colors.

In the video clip, Kaylee in the Kitchen (in the Videatives library), a two-year-old child plays for 45 minutes with Tupperware and lids, inserting, separating, pretending to drink, covering with tops. Flynn, the child in this video clip, is only one-year-old, yet he shows the same concentration, the same flow of one move followed by another. We have to ask, “What is so intriguing; what maintains his interest?” To answer this question we must escape our adult mind and acknowledge that Flynn is not trying to reach a final goal.

A total of 11 children work together to retrieve a plastic soda bottle from the other side of a chain link fence. They use fingers, feet, a rubber hose, but most essentially, their minds. When one child inadvertently pops the bottle farther from reach, the children, undaunted, treat the garden hose as a drag line to bring the bottle back into reach. Yet the problem persists - the bottle is too large to fit through the open spaces in the fence, and the fence is too high to walk the bottle up to and over the top. Watch this entire seven-minute clip.

Mathematical thinking spans our life from the child's first use of the word "more" to an adult trying to maximize retirement income.