Play, Work, Creativity, Art -- Swimming Head!

Yesterday was one of the culminating events for the Play Seminar, the Saturday Play Event in which children from K-6th grade were invited to come and engage with recycled materials -- bits and scraps -- to do whatever they wanted. It was FASCINATING. I had a blast. Altogether there were 8 children, ranging in age from 6 to 11, only 2 were boys. They were marvelous players and the range of the work they produced was stunning.

I fell in love with a doll created by a 9 year old girl named Leah. She was extremely focused, I'm told from the very beginning. I didn't join the group until late because I was at the sign in table. The decorated can in the photo next to the doll contains a beautifully intricate puppet she made and a tea party set! All from bits and scraps.

Leah sat at a table hardly speaking, but not reticent and not an 'isolate' by any means. She did engage and asked questions and sought help finding 'just the right' materials at times, and interviewed openly. Leah sat with 11 year old Jasmin, however, who was a bit of an isolate.
Jasmin, while deeply engaged and serious in what she was doing, seemed almost painfully shy. As I said, she was at the same table with Leah, whom she knew (parents seem to be good friends, both German speaking families), but unless spoken directly to, she never spoke herself. She was industrious and created something that I believe she called a birdhouse. When another little girl (Ellie) I believe, came over and told her how much she liked what she had done, Jasmin made visual contact and a little acknowledgement, but barely. Ellie seemed to know her, perhaps from school. I signed Jasmin and her father in when they arrived and from that moment, wondered how she might do in the group. I wondered if this was her choice or his for her to put herself in this social situation? That being said, she seemed to take full use of her time, by herself. I was glad to see Barbara go and talk with her a bit toward the end. I think of all of us, Barbara might have been able to make a connection with Jasmine.

The twins were a hoot! Quinn and Carney are 6 year old, boy-girl twins who are self-confident and very sweet with one another. This may be off the topic of play, but I witnessed one interaction that I loved. Carney was painting quietly at the table. Quinn came up behind her, put his arm around her and whispered in her ear rather loudly, "That brown looks like number 2 brown." (like poop) Johanna (from our class) was sitting nearby and burst out laughing. Carney turned to Quinn and said quietly, "She heard you!" Johanna said, "that's okay, I thought it was funny." I later related this story to their mother, Ginger. She laughed and then thought for a couple of moments and said, "You know, I'm pleased to see that they felt they needed to be discreet in a social situation. They wouldn't have been that way at home." Young children learn early what is 'acceptable' in social situations and what is not, but it is always interesting to see it in action. And, it is often a surprise to their own parents who cannot imagine that the kid who is so open with rude noises and maybe crude jokes at home is more careful in 'polite society' especially adults. It was a wonderful example too of 'children's private culture' that we or Johanna and I were able to glimpse.

I wondered a bit about Joey, who recently turned 7. I wasn't there to see how things began for him, but when I did first start observing him, he was receiving some pretty extensive scaffolding from Ming. I'll need to ask her how much she had to help him to get him to create that wonderful scale that he produced. The seemed to work together well, and I don't know if they spoke Chinese together or only English. I wonder if he gravitated toward her because of her Asian face, that he thought he might be more comfortable with her somehow (or visa versa -- did Ming single him out?), or if this was pure happenstance. Later, he ended up doing another project, his rainstick, with Lina, who is Malasian, and he also seemed very comfortable with her. I didn't hear him speak and don't know about his language skills.

Lilly, age 10, truly amazed me with her industry and ability to envision materials in different ways. She was the first to make a rain stick, which then caught on with some of the other children. But she also made a large scale race track, complete with ramps, another musical instrument -- some kind of wooden block shaker with a handle -- and then a delicious looking chocolate cream pie complete with a little dab of whip cream on top! Wow, no theme, just, 'what can I do with these materials'?

One thing very interesting to me was that this kind of environment allowed for each of the children who all approached the world very differently, to have freedom and support for their 'ways of being, exploring and creating'. I saw each one engage in problem-solving, deep thinking, reflection on their work, and yet not one (I don't think) considered what they did as 'work.' Learning definitely occured. Consider Carney, having to learn to balance the sides of her building as she held the cardboard in place to create her house structure. Joey, creating a pattern on his rain stick and determining what to do to put a weight on the end of his balance/scale. All of them determining what materials could be used to create the 'effect' or to portray the vision they had in their minds. Their brows were often furrowed in deep thought. There wasn't lots of joyful laughter, just a buzz of busy engaged workers -- who would not call themselves workers. I think they were playing, but some were architects, others engineers, and still others visual artists, and others seeking to create instruments of music (oh, and perhaps one baker!).

My head is still swimming as I process all I saw yesterday.

Player as Muse

My player had a wonderful time over spring break reading and writing about her favorite topic and being a muse. Her alter ego, Mary, has a chapter to write and is on a deadline, but the player made it fun by reminding her how much she LOVES what she is studying and translating into words for others.

She started by doing a lot of reading from books and journal articles -- total Geek Fest! She knows a lot about this topic, but she still couldn't get enough and loved seeing how others wrote about it and talked about it and thought about it in so many different ways. Oh, the possibilities!

But then, she had to get serious about writing something. What direction should she take? Her editor gave her so much freedom. All that 'agency' and 'autonomy' which is soooo wonderful, but.... then she started questioning herself about whether or not she ultimately, would be giving the editor what she really wanted. She started questioning herself and wondering whether this was all that much fun afterall. So, she went to a couple of movies. She saw Oz, then the silly one, the Magnificent Burt Wonderstone. She went out for lunch with a girlfriend; out to dinner with her husband. Total Avoidance.

But somewhere along the way, after lots of thinking, and lots of avoidance, and a little bit of reading of a mystery novel instead of sitting down to the computer, Mary realized the player had all along been gathering ideas. She'd collected LOTS of great ideas in her magic satchel. They'd been sorting and organizing and forming into full blown sentences and paragraphs right before her eyes. They started writing together, side-by-side, and the 'flow' started flowing, more words started coming, connecting the bits and pieces of ideas together, and all was good.

Avoidance Play or Deep Thinking?

This week I couldn't wait to get to work on my alternate ego, my 'empowered, fully-embodied' player, The Intrepid Pilgrim, as I call her, taking her off the page on which I had drawn her and colored her and making her come to life, so to speak.  I have soooo many other pressing concerns, especially some writing projects that are looming large and causing me some mental stress, but as I opened my backpack the evening after our play seminar, instead of taking out my books and notes related to those projects, and even before taking out my laptop (imagine!), I grabbed my bits and scaps of cloth, yarn and tagboard, got out some scissors, tape, and a couple of colored markers. What was I thinking?! Clearly, I was avoiding my writing, right?

 Well, I guess, yes, and no. As I worked on my player, I thought more about her, the characteristics I had given her in the resume that I wrote for her. She's all about trekking along and collecting her thoughts, taking her time to gather them all together, putting them in her satchel safe and sound so that she can go off  to a place where she can pull them out, and put them together in a meaningful way. And that's exactly what I found myself doing -- collecting my thoughts in a very content and relaxed way! As I look back on it now, some of the things I was thinking about during my work 'played' out in the writing I did this weekend. My mind, while relaxed and engaged in 'thinking about collecting my thoughts' as the embodied player at one level, was actually clicking along helping me organize some of my ideas for how to approach my work, how to sort out the ideas I was putting randomly, piece by piece into my satchel. Because I wasn't 'thinking about my thinking' at the time, the flow wasn't disturbed by this metacognition.

So, was I playing, I'd say, "yes." Was I working, "not sure." This is something we were all 'supposed to do' so that's work, right? It was productive and fun for me and it paid off in the end with a clearer head, less stress, and better organization as I began my writing. Do I understand play better, "again, I'm not sure!"

Tragic Play

The week after I turned five, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. My family and I were living in the deep south at the time, in a very small town named Batesville, Arkansas. This was like a foreign land to our family, a bunch of Roman Catholic Yankees from the Northeast. My dad had recently taken a job as a chemist in little Batesville, just before the start of my older sister's start of the school year for 6th grade. I wasn't yet in school, but mostly hung out at home playing with the neighbor boy and my little beagle dog, Tippy.

The day JFK was shot, my sister came home in tears. They had announced that the president had been shot and killed over the loud speaker in her school, and to her horror, celebratory shouts of joy rose out among the classmates and teachers at the word that the president was dead. She came home lost and confused to find our parents weeping and glued to the television set.

I remember very little about that time except the endless TV images on our grainy black and white set. I can picture clearly the living room and the family huddled around the TV and feel the emotional climate of my big sister and parents, even today when I think back to that moment -- a time when they felt so utterly saddened by the loss of the president, but so isolated and so all alone in a place in which they did not feel they 'belonged.'

What does this have to do with play? Lots. In my young barely 5-year-old brain, at some point over those endless days of watching images of the funeral for our young president, seeing his children who were about my age -- John John a little younger, Caroline a little older -- really had an impact on me. This was probably the first time I'd been exposed to death and the deep emotions that it caused others. On one of the days following the president's funeral, I packed one of my dolls in a little pink doll chest, and the neighbor boy and I covered it with a cloth, and we paraded up and down the street playing funeral. As I recall, I received such ridicule from my big sister and reactions of 'horror' from my parents later that day or perhaps at dinner, that I quickly learned that there are some aspects of play that should be hidden away from 'big people.' I was probably laughed at or made to feel what I did was shameful instead of taking it as a time to talk to me about death and what I might be feeling.

I remember sitting on our little stoop outside our carport in subsequent days and smashing ants and other bugs with my tennis shoe to watch them die and turning around sheepishly to make sure that no one saw me. I remember feeling curious, guilty, shameful, and like a 'bad girl.' But I also knew by then it was something no one should know about and there was no one I could talk to about my questions about death!

Removing the Invisibility Cloak

In the past week or so I was asked to write a 1000 words about an article written a few years ago that had a influence on some of my own work -- the Visible Empathy of Infants. I was thinking about the different 'visibilities' or things that become visible to us when we are truly observant of the play around us. As I read Playing to Learn this week, the notions of visibility were swimming in my head as Smidt described the role of 'unpopular' play such as allowing dramatic play about the difficult issues children experience or worry about to be worked out in the play corner. Isn't it only through watching and listening that their worries and the depths of their concerns truly become visible to us? How better to know the children with whom we work? And, if we truly valuable individualizing the approaches that we take with each child, and fulfilling an obligation to meet their needs holistically -- not just academically, but in terms of social/emotional well-being as well -- isn't it necessary to allow these cloaks of invisibility to fall away in the relative safety of the environments we create for them?

Children see what we see, despite attempts to 'protect' them. They see the twin towers fall, they see drone strikes in far off lands, they see hurricane destruction, OR perhaps they actually live these things. Pretending they do not see or hear or witness our own emotional reactions is, well just silly.

Perhaps it is the burrying of these emotions and visions of horror and fear that have caused so many to have real-life trauma or difficulty dealing with problems, big and small, as they move into adulthood? If we do not help children learn to cope and deal effectively with their fears, to express them and to understand that they can talk to trusting and trustworthy adults, to have their questions and concerns treated honestly and respectfully, that they grow up with their own neuroses and fears, or more readily, perhaps, buy into the whole 'culture of fear' that some would have us live in?

Just musings for the day. I shared this quote with a couple of folks on their blogs, but it is one I heard on TV this week and I like it.

"Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons (monsters) exist. Children already know that (monsters) dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons (monsters) can be killed." G. K. Chesterton

Being -- Isn't that Enough?

I've been thinking a lot today about how I feel about something I read on the weekend that is a long held and widely supported notion about one of the main purposes of play with children -- as a rehearsal for life. It has always bothered me. Way, way, way back in graduate school, I remember being struck by an article by a group of scholars deeply passionate in their call to abolish the use of the word "preschool" and the reference of young children under the age of entry into the K-Primary grades as "preschoolers." It was their contention that these children were not "pre" anything, that to call them this discounted who they were. Children didn't just exist in this time of birth to age 5 or 6 in some period just waiting or even preparing to enter some grander, more significant time; they existed, they were here, and they were doing grand and significant things just by 'being.'

In more recent years, after I became involved with the European Early Childhood Early Childhood Research Association and started attending their conferences, I became very jazzed and excited by their slant on the human rights of the young child -- something little if ever spoken about or considered in the U.S. They speak openly about young children, birth to 5, as 'human beings, not just human becomings' and value their occupations -- work and play.

So it was in this context that I considered, or reconsidered as I read these old notions of play being a rehearsal for life. Why can't it be 'life'? It is the life that the young children are living and being and doing in those moments. It is who they are and what they are working on and enjoying in those moments. Oh sure, it may be formational, it may be shaping who they will 'become' as adults -- but so what? Everything I still do, think, experience now as a 54-year-old continues to shape who I am becoming as a 54-and-a-half-year old, as a future 60-year-old, who I'll be if I live to be a wise old grandmother, isn't it? Wouldn't it be condescending to say of what I do, think, experience, and of my work, play and activities, that I am "rehearsing for an older age"? It's nonsense. We're always learning and growing and changing as human beings AND as human becomings. So there!

And forgive me, Lara, but I'm stealing one of your beautiful photos. Two-year-old Isabella and her grandpa, David, are at very different stages in life, but they seem to be sharing a very similiar understanding of and feelings about the play they are engaging in, aren't they? Aren't they both growing and changing and learning at this time? They aren't 'rehearsing' for a dang thing. They are LIVING and BEING in the moment, a totally shared human moment that transcends ages and generations. This is what play means to me.

Oh, well. I have so much more to think about!

Play Connoisseurs or Play Snobs?!

I've been thinking a lot this week about 'expertise' and 'connoisseurship' as Eisner discusses, and pondering: In our attempts to gain more expert knowledge and understanding of play and what it means to be a player, are we in danger of becoming 'snobs' about play? So many of the people I've met who have been truly, amazingly, undeniable connoisserus of their craft, knowledge, field, tend to be a little...well...

Let me ramble a bit to try to sort this out. The people I know who fancy themselves wine experts are among the worst. Ever gone to one of their homes and brought what you thought was a nice bottle of wine only to hear you were made fun of by the hosts after you left? Well I have. How about going to dinner with true wine 'experts' and having to wait endlessly while they search for the perfect wine that will go with your lasagna and their fish? Oh my! They shake their head when I reveal that I'm happy with "3 buck Chuck" from the grocery store and can't really tell the difference!

I had a friend in college who was a "sound expert" who cringed when he would enter my dorm room and hear the sound coming out of my cheap speakers from my stereo system. I didn't know a woofer from a tweater, or whatever (still don't, and don't care) but I knew what I liked and enjoyed the music from my old turntable and cheap speakers.

I am always irritated when I read critical reviews of books, movies or art that I have found that I "love," only to find that I shouldn't have because they were 'derivative' or 'disappointing,' or even 'ghastly' by those who "know" better.  

Is being  a true connoisseur a blessing or a curse?  Certainly I'm not in danger of reaching the level of connoisseur of play, but perhaps I don't wish to. Just like my wine and my music and my movies, I think I prefer to be able to enjoy play without it meeting some standard of excellence defined by someone else. I know it when I see it. I know it when I feel it. I know when I'm enjoying it without someone else telling me it is 'good' or 'bad' or 'right' or 'wrong.'

So there.