This is a blog about my
interaction with my grandson Charlie who is now 3 years and 11 months. The last
time we were together we were playing with a range of IKEA soft toys that I use
in my work with teachers. I had planned for his arrival by planning to read a
story (also from IKEA) and by laying out all the story characters around the
room. Charlie was excited when he saw all the toys and after his initial exploration
I read the story and he enjoyed finding the characters as they appeared. I
always try to follow Charlie’s interests and support his play and the next day play
possibilities emerged that I would never have expected or planned for.
I was sitting on the sofa and Charlie
was playing by himself with the soft toys. He picked up a large black rat saying,
‘they have these in Warwick castle’. ‘Rat-throwing’ is a rather bizarre game
that Charlie has enjoyed playing on visits to the castle. This year, having
moved to Oxford in September, he hasn’t been to the castle, but he still remembers
the game. His imaginary play often reflects his experiences of the world and
gives us some insight into concepts he has already acquired. He picked up a
small drum in the room and began to pretend the rat could balance it on his
nose. I asked him, ‘Is he a circus rat?’ Charlie nodded. I did a drum roll on
another drum and called out to a pretend audience, ‘Roll up, roll up, see the rat
balance a drum on his nose.’ Charlie seemed to enjoy this so I asked him, ‘Shall
we do a circus?’ He nodded. ‘I think we have a toy clown, they have clowns in the
circus don’t they?’ Charlie found the clown and began pretending it was
standing on the drum, which he turned onto its side and rolled along.
I took on the role of ringmaster
and rolled on the drum: ‘See the clown rolling a giant drum across the circus
ring.’ ‘Who else can be in the circus?’ Soon we had a wolf who could swallow a
grandma whole and emerge unscathed (a very entertaining soft toy, again from
IKEA) and a king whose heart could be taken in and out of his body (IKEA again).
Charlie picked up a little horse and pranced him around our imaginary circus
ring.
‘Where’s the pixie?’ I said, ‘she could ride
on the horse’s back.’
Charlie found the pixie and
placed her on the horse’s back and trotted off with her.
‘What about Puss-in-Boots?’ I said.
‘He can be in charge,’ said
Charlie.
‘The ring master of the circus?’
‘Yes’, said Charlie.
‘What about the dragon? Can he be
in the circus? What could he do?’
‘Breathe fire and fly,’ said
Charlie.
I did another drum role: ‘see the
amazing fire-breathing dragon fly through the big top.’ Charlie swooped the
dragon around the room. We repeated the whole thing again. I did the drum rolls
and as I called out what each toy would do in the circus, Charlie picked them
up and acted out their roles.
Later on we were in the garden
and Charlie asked for some paper and a pen. He rarely shows any interest in
mark making so I was surprised. He drew some scribbly lines on the paper.
‘Is that a poster to advertise
the circus?’ I said.
‘No, it’s a map to the circus.’
‘Shall I write, “Map to the
circus” on the top?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Charlie, so I did.
Charlie had made marks to create
a map, a symbol imbued with cultural significance and I was thrilled. Today, a
week later just as I was writing this blog, my daughter phoned me and said that
for the first time ever on Wednesday, when she had taken Charlie to work to
visit and see a member of staff’s new baby, he had asked for paper and pen and
drawn people with round bodies and stick arms. He told her who each of the
people he had drawn were and she wrote their names on the paper for him.
This is a really significant
event for us as we had previously been worried about his disinterest in mark-making
– especially as his 21 month old brother shows great interest in pens and makes
marks everywhere. This caused me to wonder why in the space of a week he had
freely chosen to mark-make in two very different and meaningful ways.
In reflecting on these events I
realise I have learnt something about child-initiated, adult-supported play. Charlie
had initiated the play with the rat and the drum. I extended it by suggesting
it could be a circus rat. I wanted to pick up on Charlie’s ideas and knew he
had some experience of circuses. We had been to the circus together when he was
two and had often talked about it and watched a video on my phone of the
trapeze act featuring a fireman. I acted spontaneously and on getting a
positive response from Charlie, went on to consciously explore the narrative of
a circus with him. He clearly understood the idea of animals doing tricks and
readily responded to my suggestions for extending his imaginary play. This
seems to illustrate the overlap between play as a natural development activity
and play as an intentional educational activity. By building on Charlie’s
personal knowledge and interests I was able to connect with him and help him to
extend his understanding of the world.
I subscribe to a socio-cultural
model of learning and believe we have to view this play in the context of
Charlie’s social and cultural world. His experience of story, circuses and soft
toys combined with his memory of the game he had played with ‘rats’ at Warwick
castle had been incorporated into his play and has enhanced his imaginative
capacity. Furthermore, Charlie has a lot of experience of entertainment and
performance in general. He has attended plays, musicals and pantomimes, and therefore
my introduction of a drum roll to stage-manage the ‘circus’ production made sense
to him in the light of his knowledge of theatre, where music can be used to
introduce action and mark transitions. His acceptance of my suggestion of creating
a circus and his capacity to join in was an imaginative act we both
participated in. I took on the mediating role of the adult by linking his play
to his lived social experience to extend his imaginative play. Charlie had
demonstrated his emotional engagement with the toys and by following this I was
able to extend his thinking and imagination. Without his affective commitment I
doubt this would have happened. And in the process I have gained a better understanding
of the relationship between child-initiated and adult-supported play. Now I
have had a chance to think about it, I wish we had gone on to look at maps and
made links between Charlie’s map-making and other maps in our world, but we can
do that another time.
Let’s return to the idea of mark
making. Charlie is in pre-school and his lack of interest in mark making was
beginning to worry us. The assessment instruments schools are expected to use are
designed to measure children against nationally expected outcomes. He will be starting school in September and in
order to be ‘school-ready’ there are expectations that he will acquire some
competence in mark making. Because of this we have been worried about his lack
of interest in this activity. I was worried that when he is assessed against the
learning indicators he would be found wanting and that this might lead his teachers
to focus on what he can’t yet do – in the name of getting him ‘school-ready’ – rather
than build on his achievements. Increasingly it is the ultimate demands of the
school and getting him ready for school that drives the experiences offered to
him and sparked our fear that he won’t measure up. I know from my work with
early years’ settings, that instead of following the child’s lead in play, many
settings are planning individual curriculum activities to address a child’s
perceived deficits.
Mark making is important and is one
of the many languages of children. In these two examples of Charlie’s
spontaneous mark making he has shown us that he is perfectly capable of
communicating through his mark making when he
decides he wants to do it. In his life he has been exposed to maps and drawing
as a way of communicating which will have shown him that graphic communication
is a valued activity and can be used to express ideas. By adding words to his
map and his drawings of people we have linked his mark making to another
communicative tool, that of writing. Because this is embedded in his everyday
experience it holds meaning for him that no amount of targeted teaching to
address a deficit can do.
As
I said in a previous blog, Charlie is already very aware of environmental print
and knows that symbols convey information; of course it was just a matter of
time before he appropriated this communicative tool for himself – it is part of
his socio-cultural context, unfortunately time has been elevated to a high
status when judging children’s capabilities – it is not just whether or not
they can do things, but when they can
do them that is important. Charlie already risked being judged as deficit
because he had not made marks according to the timescale set by the developmental
criteria. Unfortunately, we have made when
as important as what in our developmental
milestones and I think that can have a negative impact on children’s sense of
themselves and their capabilities and will alarm parents when they are told
what their child can’t yet do. The fact that Charlie’s mark making has started
later than most of his peers has been a cause for worry. I wonder how often,
when a child doesn’t demonstrate competence in a pre-determined learning
outcome at the age they are ‘supposed’ to, the result is a child worrying about
their lack of competence. How soon would children like Charlie, who began mark
making later than most of their peers, be made to feel that they were lacking
and start to worry about it? And would that school-induced worry (and often
parent-induced as well) make children anxious because they are unable to do
what the adults around them expect?
I
think it will have an impact. A teacher friend of mine recently wrote to me
about the experience she had at parents’ evening for her four year old:
“At my son’s nursery they compare him
against outcomes and his teacher spent the whole evening telling us what he
can’t do, we had to find the things he can. She said, ‘we are a bit concerned
that he only likes to play with the small world, he always chooses that.’ She
rattled off some more things he can’t do. I said, ‘what about outside, he likes
to be outside.’ She said, ‘Oh yes, he is OK outside, but he didn’t want to
build a castle in a group, and his castle wasn't as big or as elaborate as the
others.’ Everything is focused on what the children can’t do, but there was no
emphasis placed on what he can do.”
What
kind of messages are we giving to children when we focus on what they can’t do,
instead of building on what they can do and what they are interested in. As a
doting grandmother I am tempted to think that Charlie waited to mark make until
he could see a communicative point in doing it. Yet if he is viewed as a child
who doesn’t make marks and if, in response to this, the provision offered to
him targets mark making, we will be responding to a perceived deficit in the
child rather than build on his accomplishments. If choices of activities for children is driven by targets that have
been set because of the child’s failure to demonstrate the pre-determined
outcomes of the early years foundation stage we sacrifice a
child-centred curriculum.
I am worried about the increasing
prevalence of a deficit model of the child’s capacity to understand and act
upon their world. I want a model that assumes each child is a competent
learner, that is
someone who is capable, confident and self-assured. It follows from this that we need a model of children
as active and capable of fully participating and directing their own learning
through the social interactions we provide for them in educational settings and
sometimes with practitioners who can follow their learning. In contrast, a view
of the child as deficient leads to a different kind of curriculum and
interaction. The deficit model fosters a ‘can’t do’ rather than a ‘can do’
attitude that I am afraid will transfer itself to the child. Thank goodness
Charlie has started mark making before he saw himself as deficient in this area. I look forward to finding out where our play
might lead us next.
