The Problem With "Loose Parts"

I suppose I'm happy that the concept of "loose parts" play has taken the early childhood world by storm these past few years. It seems like not a day goes by that I don't discover a website dedicated to loose parts play, or a loose parts workshop for teachers, or a new book that will help us better understand it. Of course, it's an idea that's been around since the advent of children, one that was once just implied in the standard understanding of play: when left to their own devices kids tend to pick up whatever is at hand and goof around with it. Then, over the course of modernization and commercialization, we came to understand the idea of "toys" manufactured specifically for children's play, and many of us adopted those things as the hub around which play necessarily revolved.

Children, of course, still continued to play with loose parts, some of which were these toys, broken, modified, or otherwise, but we adults lost sight of that amidst the bright colors, flashing lights, and annoying noises of those objects that came from toy stores. And as toys became cheaper and more prevalent and better marketed our homes and classrooms have come to be overwhelmed with them. But even then, children continued their loose parts play. Who among us, for instance, hasn't joked that our kids prefer the boxes the toys came in over the toys themselves?

So yes, I'm please that there is a renewed focus on the open-endedness of things like rocks and sticks and pinecones, of toilet paper tubes and mint tins and yoghurt containers, of old tires and planks of wood and house gutters, but I worry that we are on the edge of turning those into just another commodity to be bought and sold. I worry that in our embrace of loose parts play we are concentrating far too much on the loose parts and not enough on the play. I worry when I hear teachers fussing about their "loose parts" collection, hovering over the children lest they damage or misuse or lose their precious loose parts.

The children at Woodland Park have been engaged in loose parts play for as long as I've been the teacher, but you'll rarely hear me use the term. I usually just call it "junk," or in the case of items that come from nature like leaves or sticks, I might refer to it as "debris." Whatever it's called, the key element is that we didn't pay for it and I have no concerns that it will be damaged, misused, or lost. That's one of the things that makes loose parts play so engaging for: the adults aren't fretting. Most of what you'll find on our playground came either from the earth itself or from the garages, attics, and recycling bins of the families who have enrolled their children. I often say that one of the functions of preschools isn't to use stuff, but to finish using it. We still have toys around, but most of them are broken in some way -- the cars have lost wheels, the dolls have lost their heads, and the balls have lost their shape. When we do spend money it's not on toys or loose parts, but rather on tools and furniture, things that need to be sturdy.

So while I'm pleased that more and more of us are discussing the value of loose parts play, I guess my caution is that we don't lose sight of the fact that you don't need to go shopping for these things and you don't need to "teach" the children how to play with them. Your world is already abundant with loose parts. Your recycling bin is full of them, your cellar is choc-a-bloc, and a broken toy is often much better than a new one. Our main job is simply make junk available and to step out of the way. The kids, as they always have, know what to do with it.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Imagine The World We Could Create

Human babies are born with their full capacity to see, but they are unable to focus or move their eyes in a coordinated way. Their visual world is therefore blurry and gray. Babies must learn to see, much in the way they will later learn to walk and talk.

The way sight works is that particles of light, photons, alter the receptors in our retinas. Our bodies then convert that into electricity, which becomes information. We must then assemble this information into what we've come to understand as the visual world. In other words, our minds must learn to create what we see, which means, in a very real sense, that babies are born seeing the world as it actually is without the intervention of the human mind and must then, over the course of the next several years, learn how to not just passively see like a camera might, but to actively make the world.

It's amazing to think about and even more so when we consider that this is the process involved with all our senses: our minds must learn to convert abstract sensations into what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch, and this is a process that is carried out during most of our preschool years. We are literally learning to create the world. Is it any wonder that scientists working for NASA found that a full 98 percent of four and five years olds they tested fell into the category of "creative genius," while only two percent of adults do. 

As adults, reality is a kind of settled science in the sense that we long ago learned how to assemble the information provided by the particles and waves of the universe into what we perceive to be real. Young children are still in the process of learning to create, their brains making form from formlessness, sense from senselessness, and concreteness from abstraction. It is a mind-boggling process, work that can only be done by a creative genius.

This is what we interrupt when we insist upon inflicting our agendas on young children, foisting mere memorization and ciphering upon them, insisting that they "learn" whatever it is we've decided they must learn, succumbing to a reality that is not of their own creation. This is the reason that the first five years must remain sacred, a time when we allow these creative geniuses the time, space, and freedom to do what they are designed to do, which is learn to create reality. And if we could succeed at this, if we could, say, allow one single generation this sacred time in which to genuinely play as they are designed to do, perhaps more than two in 100 of us would emerge with their capacity for creative genius intact. Imagine the world we could create.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Swinging, Rolling, And Spinning

As an enthusiastic, new parent, I once made myself vomit from rolling down a grassy hill one too many times. It had likely been a couple decades since my last grassy hill and I'd remembered it as joyful, but the actual experience was anything but. The same goes for swinging. I'll sometimes sit on our playground swings, but anything more than a couple back-and-forths and I'm done.

It's part of growing up. Young children crave swinging, rolling, and spinning. That's because they need it. It helps their nervous system to mature and organize. I've written before about how we've never found a need to make rules surrounding out our swing set, a place where there are often as many as a dozen kids engaged in getting their sensory fix, activating the fluid filled cavities of their inner ears, instinctively developing their sense of balance, finding their centers. It's yet another example of how children, when left to their own devices without the constant direction of all-knowing, all-protecting adults, know what is best for themselves.

Of course, they are "just" playing, and no matter how much science there is behind what they do, the play always comes first. Indeed, it is a failure of or modern world that we feel we must prove play's value with science. Play, like love, like wisdom, like life, is a pure good: that it is supported by science should strike us all as a "no duh" revelation.

One girl was working to go "all the way upside down."

One girl had persuaded an adult to wind her up in the tire swing, "Higher . . . higher . . . higher . . ." in anticipation of a wild, out-of-control ride.

One girl was opting to keep matters under own hand, twisting the chains herself, then allowing her body to more slowly spin-drop until her dragging feet brought her to a stop. They played their spinning and swinging games over-and-over, not vomiting, thrilling at their dizziness.

They were playing, following their instincts, joyfully. It was everything to them. If adults could re-learn to trust children, it would be everything to us as well.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you! 

To Talk And Listen And Agree

As we gather for circle time I sing . . .

Come on over to the checker board rug.

Come on over to the checker board rug.

Come on over to the checker board rug

And have a seat on the floor.

Over the years it's become a kind of ritual, with the children often singing or humming along with me. Sometimes I goof on the lyrics, replacing "rug" with "slug” or "floor" with "ceiling." The children tend to delight in correcting me, telling me "No! That's not right," laughing together as they come together which is a good way to start, even if we're going to be discussing serious matters like feelings or work on forging agreements about how we want to treat one another. 

We are always unconsciously working on becoming a community, of course, in everything we do or say with one another, but circle time is where we consciously focus on creating it, each of us having the opportunity to both speak and listen, to disagree and agree, to assume our collective responsibility for the world in which we live. This is where we actively create our world.

As animals with certain, limited, abilities to perceive, we tend to experience reality as a concrete thing, something that exists outside of us, built of undeniable facts, and this, to a greater or lesser extent, shapes and limits all of us. Since the Enlightenment, at least, the dominant view of scientists, artists, and philosophers tended toward a "clockwork" view of the universe, everything ticking along according to an as yet unknowable (but perhaps someday knowable) plan, machine-like, inevitable, unstoppable. Humans were clockworks as well, our brains, our bodies, our chemistry all subject to the immutable laws of nature. But more recently, we've begun to understand that this is not the case at all, that rather than being subjects of reality, we are in fact creators of it.

What we see is not what we see, but rather points of reflected light from which our brains create what we see.

What we hear is not what we hear, but rather waves that our ears transform into vibrations, then electricity, that we then use to create what we hear.

What we taste is not what we taste, what we smell is not what we smell, what we remember is not what we remember: all of it is our brains and bodies (which are really the same thing) creating order from chaos. 

Sometimes when I call the children over to the checker board rug, I hum the song while rapidly vibrating a finger between my upper and lower lips, speed boat style. I'm not singing the words, but the children hear them, singing along, anticipating, creating the full song from their own brains. Insisting, in fact, that I am singing the words even when I demonstrate that I'm not. They are making reality together, which is what humans do.

It's mind blowing stuff: it's hard to wrap our brains around it. I think of the young children I wrote about yesterday, those humans who are born with the wisdom of the true nature of time, living in it not as a continuum, but an ever-emerging present. The younger humans are, the closer we seem to be to perceiving the universe as it really is. Then we gain experience. We learn to instead perceive the world the way the other humans do, with it's lies of perception: we believe in what we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel, not because it is true, but rather because we've agreed that it's true.

On a day to day basis, I suppose, this all falls under the category of "true, but not necessarily useful." We are, after all, animals that have evolved to perceive the universe in a certain limited way, forever blocked from perspectives that would allow us to experience beyond our senses. Yet, if the scientists and artists and philosophers are correct, even this is a matter our own creation, individually and collectively. And looked at that way, perhaps it is useful. Perhaps it tells us that things are never hopeless. Maybe it allows us to know that change, even massive, sudden, earth-shaking change is possible, and it can happen in a moment if only we will come together on our checker board rugs to talk and listen and agree.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Swinging, Rolling, And Spinning

As an enthusiastic, new parent, I once made myself vomit from rolling down a grassy hill one too many times. It had likely been a couple decades since my last grassy hill and I'd remembered it as joyful, but the actual experience was anything but. The same goes for swinging. I'll sometimes sit on our playground swings, but anything more than a couple back-and-forths and I'm done.

It's part of growing up. Young children crave swinging, rolling, and spinning. That's because they need it. It helps their nervous system to mature and organize. I've written before about how we've never found a need to make rules surrounding out our swing set, a place where there are often as many as a dozen kids engaged in getting their sensory fix, activating the fluid filled cavities of their inner ears, instinctively developing their sense of balance, finding their centers. It's yet another example of how children, when left to their own devices without the constant direction of all-knowing, all-protecting adults, know what is best for themselves.

Of course, they are "just" playing, and no matter how much science there is behind what they do, the play always comes first. Indeed, it is a failure of our modern world that we feel we must prove play's value with science. Play, like love, like wisdom, like life, is a pure good: that it is supported by science should strike us all as a "no duh" revelation.

One girl was working to go "all the way upside down."

One girl had persuaded an adult to wind her up in the tire swing, "Higher . . . higher . . . higher . . ." in anticipation of a wild, out-of-control ride.

One girl was opting to keep matters under own hand, twisting the chains herself, then allowing her body to more slowly spin-drop until her dragging feet brought her to a stop. They played their spinning and swinging games over-and-over, not vomiting, thrilling at their dizziness.

They were playing, following their instincts, joyfully. It was everything to them. If adults could re-learn to trust children, it would be everything to us as well  . . . Although perhaps not for us.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you! 

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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This Community That Will Always Be A Part Of Who They Are

Every other year, we would be done with our school year by now, but Seattle, like much of the rest of the country experienced more snow than usual over the winter, so we tacked on three more class days. Many of our families had already made plans, however, so attendance was low yesterday, making it a quiet, lazy day, one that makes a nice transition into summer.

Our two-year-olds are mostly three-year-olds now, and as they tend to do, they have begun to turn increasingly toward one another, connecting over simple things like running from one place to another, digging the same hole, or tossing wood chips into the air. When I sang a familiar song yesterday, one with a by now well-known punch line, they waited together in complete silence, anticipating it together, agreeing without words passing between them to remain utterly silent during the extra long pause, then scream-laughing when I finally delivered the goods: laughing not at me, the performer, like audiences normally do, but into one another's faces, their ritualistic laugh bonding them, a celebration of this community that will always be a part of who they are no matter where in the world their lives take them.

Not so long ago, these "babies" did not know that they began and their mother ended. Some of them still don't know this for certain. It's the place we all begin and it's a place we spend much of our lives trying to recreate: not seeking a return to the womb exactly, although there may be a part of that as well, but rather expanding the womb, bringing what we are born knowing about the interconnectedness of humankind out there with us, learning that it's not just mommy, not just daddy, not just brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, but all of these other people as well who make us whole. This is something the children teach one another. Or maybe it's more like they remind or confirm for one another, just as they remind we adults who too often live as if we've forgotten, even if we still find in reflective moments that this wisdom is still a piece of who we are.

Away we'll go now, off on our own, never to reconvene in exactly this way again, taking the us we've created along however, where it will re-kindle wherever we find people of goodwill playing together, singings songs, and telling stories.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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What Real Learning Looks Like

"(Real learning) does not look like 6-year-olds slumped in chairs . . . staring at iPads . . ." ~parent's testimony before Cambridge School board

This is the problem with letting dilettantes, even well-intended dilettantes, lead when it comes to education policy. They don't have the experience to recognize what real learning looks like, and since they tend to come from the world of business, they don't trust mere "employees" (teachers), especially if they belong to a union, so they come up with arbitrary data points that carry with them a hint of education-ness, then subject children to their amateur hour. I don't think that most of them want to be cruel to children and their parents, but in their ignorance they believe they know better because they've managed to make money off selling software or hardware or something, so they conjure up education-ish sounding ideas and, because they can, they impose them, despite the objections of those of us who do have the experience to know what real learning looks like.

Anyone who has spent any time in a classroom knows that real learning does not look like children slumped in chairs staring at iPads. Real learning looks like stepping in a puddle you've made with your friends, then sinking in until the water tops your boots.

Real learning looks like pouring water through systems of funnels and tubes.

Real learning looks like mixing a whole lot of stuff together with your friends to see what happens.

Real learning looks like negotiating how to share scarce and valuable resources.

Real learning looks like children imitating one another . . .

. . .  then taking it to the next level.

Real learning looks like testing our physical limits.

Real learning looks like performing experiments.

Real learning looks like trying on costumes.

Real learning looks like princesses and fairies.

Real learning looks like figuring out how to make something new from unfamiliar materials.

Real learning looks like conflict and resolution.

Real learning looks like hanging out with a friend and talking about the world.

Real learning looks like engagement in a process one has never tried before.

Real learning looks like children cleaning up after themselves.

Real learning looks like children doing things for themselves.

Real learning looks like preschoolers in a brewery carrying kegs.

Real learning looks like children playing in a concrete pond in the rain.

Real learning looks like animals lined up in a row.

Real learning looks like patterns made from goldfish.

Real learning looks like keeping track of important things like how many bowling pins you've knocked down.

Real learning looks like hands covered in purple paint.

Real learning looks like standing in play dough with your friends.

Real learning looks like creating great beauty with your friends.

Real learning looks like doing any project with your friends.

Real learning looks like being together, doing things together, figuring things out together.

Real learning looks like children carving out their own space in the world.

Real learning looks like children following their own path.

This list only scratches the surface of what real learning looks like. I've been teaching at Woodland Park for 18 years. It would take at least that long to give you my full list. But I assure you, one thing that real learning doesn't look like is children slumped in chairs staring at iPads.

I've published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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