I would like to introduce you a material I love and use in my creative research: paper strips, a waste material you can easily ask for free to printing houses.
How can our personal artistic research – as teachers and adults – be an inspiration for children processes and not a model to similarly repeat? How presenting the materials in a educationale context? What examples or “tecniques” to show to children?
I presented paper strips to small groups of 4-5 years old children, inviting them to freely play with this material and a stapler. What is your first thought about? Any prefiguration about how it worked?
I think it is a central question and there is not an always valid response. In this case, I was not the theacher and children did not know me. One morning I just shortly introduced myself to the entire classroom. I told I was able to transform materials.
For example, let me show you how we could transform a strip of paper. Have you ever tried?
I slowly pulled out a long stripe of paper and a stapler, as if they were very special things. There were 48 eyes staring at me silently. As I formed a circle, they shout: It’s a sun! A hat! (and I put it in my head) A wheel! (and I made it roll). Without speaking, I went on with other trasformations, letting children being involved in this simbolic game.
Finally, I told I would have liked to come back to play with them with paper strips. When I came back, all the children remembered me and were very excited. We worked in small groups of four children for about one hour. In the beginning, many of them asked me to show how to create a heart, a house or other shapes they remembered. But I answered: Well, I am not sure of what I exactly did and how… Please try by yourself, go on, than I will help you if you can’t. Trying by themselves, children started to develop a personal process and most of the time forgot the first shape they asked me.
Even if it was a very limited activity for the available materials, it allowed the development of many different, unique processes. (Despite limits or thanks to limits?)
I tried to make each child feel comfortable, welcome and free to approach the material. If the environment is “good enough”, if we (educators and teachers) are not worried about educational goals or parents’ expectations, every child can express his/her unique potential through materials.
This process is often not a linear, with a clear result consisting in a single, final work, like the ones in the images above and below. For example, the most significant part could be the sensory exploration, the spoken words, the movements of the body or probably more of these interconnected aspects. When a final product is missing or less noticeable, it is very frustrating for those who consider the product as the necessary proof to make visible children’s learning. I think we should try to have a different, wider perspective. Here is a story about it. Please, take a minute to read.
Alessandro, 5 years old, repeated the same sequence of actions all along: folding a small strip on itself and then letting open it again, observing what happened to the strip. He created many spiral shapes, that were very similar but every time a bit different by chance. At some point, he used this sequence of actions to invent a game: he rolled up the strip, gripped it tightly in his fist, hiding it, then he moved casually near another child without getting noticed and suddenly left the stripe free, with a kind of spring-effect, in order to scare the child.
It was an investigation of the moviment that the spiral shape can produce, then this moviment became a game. Moreover, the transition from closed to open, from compressed to expanded is also significant from a symbolic point of view. You can see as in this case, the product can’t be divided from the process. It also makes us remember the importance of repetition: to consolidate a learning process, to investigate, to observe small differences, to reassure, to be enough sure before doing the next step.
Why is it important to know the characteristcs of the material we offer, to work it with our hands before offering it to children? Of course, not for showing them our beautiful works and skills, but to make the best choice for them: finding the most suitable way to present the material, good relaunches and ideas to manage the most difficult aspects. For example, in the case of paper strips, you would expect that such a serial material stimulates the production of a very big quantity of similar works (specially in the beginning of the activity), so that the available space will become probably full of stuff.
Already knowing it, you will be ready to cope with this kind of messy and overwhelmed situation, trying to contain it in order to support the process. For example, suggesting to join some of the paper works, to collect them, build with them, looking for a story or some kind of composition. In this way, what was overwhelming and cahotic can gain a new meaning.
We should trust both materials and children. There is a reason or a need for whatever a child do or not do, and only from where children actually are, some kind of development can happen. Finally, I would like to end with some words of Nona Orbach, artist and art therapist, from her upcoming book “The Good Enough Studio”: A good kindergarten or elementary school educator needs to recognize the specific characteristics of each child. If an educator does see the child’s underlying qualities, they will be able to relate genuinely to each of them, and the children will feel that they are truly seen. If children are acknowledged and have a safe place to be themselves, they will also be less aggressive towards others. Children in such an environment tend to play and work for a longer period of time, and have better social skills. It is a profound need of our human nature to be genuinely seen by others; it assures us that we are loved and accepted as we are.
Thus any child, truly seen, will blossom.
Have you ever met Esther? You will find a special transformation of a paper strip on my Youtube channel robertapuccilab.