Tag Archives: materials

Avoiding the “Shoulds”

IMG_1245Aidan sat at a small table in the house area with a doll and basket of doll clothes. He selected a small shirt and began fitting it over the doll’s head, concentrating hard, his tongue slightly protruding from between his teeth. It took experimentation, trial and error, but Aidan managed to get the doll’s head through the neck hole and the arms into the sleeves. He smiled, removed the shirt, chose a sleeper and began the process of fitting again. He found a headband that fit the dolls head, then a jacket. All the while Aidan worked silently, with intensity and focus, and no one paid him much mind.  A lovely example of a boy in the house area dressing a doll, playing ‘dad’.

Or is it?

I thought about how Aidan held the doll and the clothes, how he chose particular pieces of clothing from the basket and I began to see other possibilities. I thought about Aidan’s way of manipulating other objects and materials in this child care space, how he arranged objects in rows, fit items one inside the other, stacked things. As I considered all this it dawned on me that Aidan was not ‘playing dad’, he wasn’t ‘dressing a baby’. Rather he was experimenting with the mechanics of how objects fit together. How does a round hole in fabric, fit over a round plastic shape, the doll’s head? How do plastic arms fit into narrow cloth sleeves? How can the tension of the fabric change and accommodate the plastic body of the doll? The questions of fabric and plastic, and what they can do together, how they resist, pull, stretch, and slide are intriguing and endless.

The objects that Aidan was using suggested a particular way of seeing, a particular narrative of ‘house’ and ‘dad’ and ‘baby’. I observed Aidan interacting with the doll and clothes and assumed a narrative of ‘dressing a baby’. My assumption of ‘dressing a baby’ limited what I saw.

How often do we assume a particular narrative based on our assumptions?  How often do we limit other possibilities by not attending to different ways of seeing?

What if I had commented to Aidan “You are taking good care of that baby” or “Now that baby has pyjamas on, are you going to put it to bed?” With such comments would I have been imposing my idea of what ‘should’ happen in the house area, how materials found there ‘should’ be used, how an identity as ‘dad’ and ‘baby’ ‘should’ be played in the house area?  Would Aidan have felt he could continue his experiments with the mechanics of plastic and fabric, or would he have understood his experiments as not the right way to use a doll?

I am going to be listening and observing more, questioning my assumptions……trying to avoid the ‘shoulds’….

An Ode to Tape

The feeling of tape against skin is compelling, curious and addictive. Tape wound on fingers, tape over mouth, tape stuck in hair, tape on a t-shirt.  And in the process there will be tape against tape, an ungainly mess. But an interesting ungainly mess.

1.5 copy

Tape can hold anything together

4 copy

Tape a straw to a box and voila!

You can drink from it.

 6 copy

Tape can be control panels for trips to Mars.

7 copy

It can hold a house together.

8 copy

Tape can be a building tool.

10 copy

Tape can be aerial insect pathways.

11.5 copy

Tape can hold everything together. Tape might be the thing needed to keep your life together.

11 copy

Tape can be life.

Screen Shot 2013-05-31 at 10.01.58 PM

You’re Too Young to Paint!



IMG_3259 copy



therefore unable to use paint ‘properly’?

IMG_3283 copy





Are toddlers simply not trustworthy?



IMG_3260 copy

 What are we afraid of?


I wonder why?




A painting from an easel with three colours.
A painting from an easel with three colours.


A painting from an easel with two colours.
A painting from an easel with two colours.


