Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Museum Moment
My museum moment was in the water area. I first sat and observed the layout for a while, I even tried out a few things to see how things were operating (I couldn't help it). Then I watched two children first playing separately working out the inner workings of various cranks and funnels and such. Then I noticed one of the children was trying to construct something in the water with a hose that was detached, she tried putting it into various holes with very little luck, when the boy came along they worked as a team to problem solve and come up with a way to make it all work out. The boy went in search of other such tubes to connect with the first and came back happily with others. Together they put together a makeshift hose which they could transfer water to other unreachable places. The reason it caught my eye was that I don't think these two children knew each other, and I could be wrong, but the one who was the joiner was a few years younger, yet he had ventured out to find the solution to the problem. This made me think of Vygotsky and the ZPD, these children were of different ages and the one who ultimately came up with the solution was the younger of the two. The reason I thought of Vygotsky was that these kids were of separate age groups and I am guessing by this small observation separate abilities, but they worked cohesively to solve a problem. So I wonder if at some points does it benefit a child to be paired up with someone of a different ability level? I would think that the next time she is at the water table she will remember that hooking many of the tubes together will help her to achieve her goal and that she will not run through the same process again.
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So cool! I was also in the water room and saw a lot of collaboration (between potential strangers) occurring. You didn't mention it in your post, so I'm not sure if these two spoke or not, but much of the collaboration I watched between children was non-verbal, but rather body language and modeling with tools. I think it is so important to keep in mind that while even very young children are picking up on verbal cues every second of their life, the language which they are able to employ meaningfully is that of the body, and this is something I think I forget easily, since my most efficient way of communicating is through words. I noticed that many (most) interactions between children and parents in this water area were non-verbal, so I wonder if this knowledge/strategy is something that comes more naturally when hanging out with very young children all the time.
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