Play Conditions: A Framework

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

Photo credit: Vergeront (WonderTrek)

Play Conditions are a bit like Robinsyard. Robinsyard, you ask? 

When my nephew Matthew was 4 years old, he carried a small rolled up piece of paper tucked into a yarn belt that he liked to wear. I asked him what had he drawn on the paper and he replied, “Robinsyard.” I knew he had a friend name Robin, but I didn’t know what a Syard was. So, I asked, “What’s a Syard?” Matthew replied, “I don’t know but Robin has one.” After some mulling about what a Syard might be, I guessed that it was Robin’s Yard. The precise meaning is not so critical. What is important is that: 

 Play conditions are like Robinsyard: It’s hard to explain what they are, but we have them. And play conditions have meaning in children’s lives. 

We may not have precise terms for play conditions, a shared vocabulary, or a taxonomy for them. (We don’t really have a definition of play, either.) We do, however, have a sense of when play conditions are just right: when children are engaged actively, deeply, and joyously in play—play that they direct and find enjoyable. That’s when play conditions are well tuned. Conversely, when interactions are few, focus and attention is brief, conflict is frequent, children’s affect is flat, and ambience is bland, play conditions are out-of-whack with the intentions for the experience, the space, and those children. 

Play doesn’t happen independently of the conditions surrounding it. Since we think, in general, very little about the conditions that encourage exploring, playing, and learning, we are hazy about just what they are and how to harness them. For about the last 10 years, I’ve been exploring the idea of play conditions in planning work, learning frameworks, and master plans. Currently, I am part of a team at WonderTrek Children’s Museum, an emerging museum in north central Minnesota, working with play conditions in a collaborative question-driven, iterative process that explores, documents, and shares insights from children in play-based settings. 

This work is giving shape to a framework that helps get at the complexity and simplicity of

Photocredit: Vergeront (MIA)

 play and play conditions. Starting with working definitions, this framework acknowledges related concepts, identifies a set of play conditions, and frames principles that tell us something about the nature of these play conditions. 

While the framework focuses on play conditions, it is relevant to shaping spaces and experiences in every kind of museum as well as encouraging inquiry and learning. In fact, museum planners, developers, designers, and educators often draw on qualities and varied conditions in creating exhibits, environments, and programs that engage visitors— but they may not be doing so intentionally nor focusing on play. 

Play and Play Conditions 

Exploring play conditions relies on having a shared understanding of play among staff, team, or partners. This can be challenging. Affected by age, setting, and who’s controlling it, play is not always easy to recognize. It is connected to exploration and learning which children seem to move between seamlessly. Definitions of play are abundant as well. One I am drawn to places the child at the center and works across varied contexts. Play is freely chosen, personally directed, and intrinsically motivated. 

Viewing play conditions as the qualities or variables of the physical and social environments that are likely to encourage (or discourage) and support children’s play accommodates this definition of play and others. It also recognizes that there can be conditions that interfere with play. 

Photo credit: Vergeront (CMOM)

Play conditions share some qualities with the concept of affordance, the features or property of an object that define its possible uses or how it can or should be used. A chair’s properties afford sitting or standing on it. An affordance provides strong cues about the operation of things. It is an actionable and discoverable possibility. In some design contexts like user-interface, an affordance prompts users to take specific actions. 

While play conditions may include affordances, they are not limited to physical features nor are they directive. More than 3-dimensional space, physical design, furniture, or arrangement, play condition’s qualities are also temporal, social, and affective. They tap into all senses, give cues, and suggest possibilities. Neither a recipe nor a formula, nor a way of scripting children’s play, play conditions are as open-ended as play itself. 

Seven Play Conditions 

An understanding of play conditions emerges from what research, child development, play theory and museum practices suggest will encourage and support children’s exploration, play, and learning in informal learning settings. Dimensions such as space, materials, relationships, and provocations, salient to different aspects of play, help in understanding play conditions. Observations, imagination, and intuition add to this knowledge, filling gaps and inviting us to think together. 

By separating and clustering these dimensions, we discover examples and possibilities, and begin to examine and manipulate play conditions in intentional and new ways. Seven play conditions are summarized below. Each is characterized by the general role it plays, its valued qualities, and a small sample of possibilities. 

• Image of the Child is about the child’s strengths and capabilities and means engaging children at their highest level of ability; and making their strengths and capabilities visible. 
• Valued qualities are: children’s curiosity, capabilities, social disposition, caring and empathy 
• Possibilities that support and reflect the child’s capabilities: choices for one child and different choices for different children; traces of children’s thinking, doing, and making; focus on shared interests, etc. 

• Context or Setting is about both physical and social space, ranging from macro to micro, where children can explore, play, and learn. 
• Valued qualities are: safe, welcoming and accessible settings 
• Possibilities for shaping settings: different scales, large and small spaces; light and sound; recognizable features; wayfinding clues; edges that define and differentiate areas, etc. 

•  Invitation to Explore is about arranging selected elements to provoke or encourage children to notice and wonder, explore ideas—without giving too much direction. 
• Valued qualities are: sparking curiosity; the child taking the experience where it needs to go; offering something worth noticing and discovering 
• Possibilities for encouraging exploration: something fascinating; questions incongruities; multiple provocations; a sound walk, etc. 

• Materials and Objects is about loose parts, tools, phenomena, art materials, digital media, etc. that give children agency and choice; encourage exploration and experimentation that is physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and linguistic; that generate new possibilities; and reveal new perspectives and insights about the world. 
• Valued qualities are materials that support children’s agency, promote noticing and wondering; change with use and generate new insights; work at multiple ages
• Possibilities for materials: engage some and sometimes all the senses; are real stuff; can be carried, lined up, and moved; change with use, etc. 

• Relationships is about children and adults engaging with others; feeling a sense of

  

  Photo credit: Vergeront (Madison Children's Museum)

  welcome, respect, and connection 
• Valued qualities foster social connections, value the individual and the group, are collaborative 
• Possibilities for connecting: exchanging ideas among children; scaffolding; conversation; multiple places and positions, roles or seating, etc. 

• Content is based in children’s interests and what is fascinating and meaningful to them about the world 
• Valued qualities are interdisciplinary content; implicit content from child development; meaningful connections for the child 
• Possibilities for engaging with content: comes through the senses, is embedded in the world, is released through interactions, can be experienced from different points of view, etc. 

• Time is about a sense of open and unregulated play; time to direct play, follow an activity to a satisfying moment, and find enjoyment
• Valued qualities are children deciding when play starts and ends; play stretching out over time
• Possibilities for opening up time come from discouraging distractions and interruptions; allowing experiences to come to a natural end 

 A set of play conditions with examples helps us move away from predictable approaches towards deliberately thought through play set-ups. Working with play conditions nudges us into thinking in the languages of space, materials, relationships, and provocations and developing new ways of thinking. Considering possible play conditions slows us down from leaping to a finished idea or design. We see how play conditions, like children’s play, lean into and interact with one another, virtually seamlessly. We realize, for instance, how Materials are instrumental in creating an Invitation to Explore; how Materials prompt conversations which support Relationships; and how the Image of the Child and Time can’t be separated from other conditions. Finally, play conditions tell us as much about inviting rich play as they do about getting out of the way of children’s play. 

Ten Principles of Play Conditions 

Bringing a play conditions approach into creating opportunities for play takes time. It can be a new way of thinking. Integrating the approach into existing practices can involve problem solving and collaboration, backing up and starting over. Tailoring specific play conditions, these or others, to your context, whether for indoor or outdoor play, is always an on-going process. Paying attention to the following 10 principles along the way will provide support and add to your insights. Play conditions: 

1. Are always present, whether we are aware of them or not, and whether they are favorable to play or not.  

2. Impact children’s agency in their play. Play conditions can let the child direct the play, allow children to make of their play what they need to—or play conditions can interfere with play. 

3. Span all scales. From the full volume of a space, to the smallest loose parts, to open sight lines, to the ambiance of a space, play conditions are all sizes and proportions.

 

4. Are more than objects and more than space, more than the architecture, design and decoration. They are tangible and intangible.

 

Photo credit: Jim Roe (SMM)

5. Interact with one another as well as with children making the conditions fluid and dynamic. There is no one, or right, way to create play conditions. 

6. Induce something to happen, not by removing choices, but by creating the conditions that will increase the chances that children will engage deeply in play. 

7. Balance intentions for the experience with opening up possibilities, creating a place between what we think might happen and what we don’t yet know is possible. 

8. Require imagining to build a picture of what might happen if...; how a particular possibility might interact with other qualities and how children might engage with it. 

9. Come into clearer focus over time. Children are teaching us about play conditions all the time. We can learn by observing, listening, imagining, and reflecting on what they show us. 

10. Are more than the sum of their parts. 

What Happens When… 

Working with play conditions is, fundamentally, forming a hypothesis, or a succession of hypotheses about the relationship between children’s play and ways to support the place and processes of play. While not causal, relationships are operating. And while we don’t know what’s going to elicit play, with practice we can be more attuned to these connections and, increasingly, use them deliberately. 

Prompted by an exploratory question or experiential goal, play conditions help us in shifting from our hopes for play in general to lived experiences of deep, enjoyable, play that engages children’s bodies, minds, and feelings. We begin with conjuring up openings for play with our wonderings. How might we engage children in investigating properties of found objects and using them in their play? What materials might encourage children to change their physical space? How can we support children in setting challenges and taking risks? How do children share their ideas with one another? 

As we interrogate the content of play conditions, reflect on past experiences, observe children 

Photo credit: Snarkitecture

at play in varied settings, we have new hunches, generate possibilities, find fresh combinations, and ask another “what if?” question. We begin to discover, and hypothesize about, connections between the presence of certain features and children’s play. We build theories—temporary explanations—that express what might happen when particular qualities or variables of the physical and social environment are brought together. These hypotheses and mini-theories about places for play help us keep track of this world we are creating with children for play. 

Over time, we test, improve, and edit our understandings of the conditions that encourage the kind of play that we hope children will enjoy—rich, flexible, and full of possibilities for them to discover. 

Museum Notes 

• Experimental Mindset
• Experience Goals for Exhibitions
• Listening to How Children See Their World
• When Play’s the Thing 
• The Museum Environment as Teacher
• In Between Research, Theory and Practice 

Children as Placemakers and Worldmakers

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

Place means something to children discovering their world, who they are, and where they belong. Sensitive to their surroundings, children’s encounters with spaces and places are immediate, multi-sensory, physical, emotional, and full of information. Place, whether it is small or large, familiar or new, invites children to explore, discover, make meaning, and learn. It shapes their understanding, experiences, and ideas. A powerful way for them to know and understand themselves and their world, place calls to them to climb, check out new perspectives, pour water over sand and see what happens, stack sticks, use their whole bodies to measure a space, and hypothesize about what happens here.

Children are natural and active placemakers. Their placemaking is an open, exploratory process of transforming a space through play, imagination, stories, and friendships that brings new meaning to it, builds their knowledge of the world, and expands their sense of self.

Children’s constructions are the most obvious expression of their placemaking and initially what placemaking suggests to us. Images of forts, hideouts, and dens come to mind, hiding places tucked into a hedge or behind the curtain of low spreading boughs. Found across many settings, special places may also be under tables, nestled among sand dunes, in the attic, enclosed by sofa cushions, or deep in the woods. Sometimes ephemeral, children’s places may also be where they return physically and in different seasons. Special places are sometimes enduring and remembered throughout life. 

Photo credit: Vergeront

 

Seemingly empty spaces­–under the stairs, the corner of a lot, behind the garage, the depths of a snow pile–summon children and invite them to explore their potential; they fill in with their imaginations. Qualities of space–openness, enclosure, height, scale, shape, fragrances, sounds and silences, different textures, even drops of water–suggest possibilities for what a space might become. An old, old tree, a distant view, a rise in the landscape, a remembered story can envelop a space and make an ordinary spot extraordinary. Likewise, something fascinating may call out to a child or pose a question. The blurred pathway that crosses a clearing, a place of brilliant light changing to deep shadow might inspire placemaking.

Placemaking-possibilities may be triggered incidentally: stumbling on an old wooden crate, digging up pottery pieces, discovering a dented hubcap, finding traces of past activities, or remembering the fragment of a story or song. But the power of a place is itself a compelling invitation. Sunlight, lacy shadows, or cool shade can summon placemaking. Subtle, unusual, and capricious environmental conditions–wind, mist, springs, echoes–are qualities that can add drama, mystery, and possibility for shaping space and supporting exploration.

The open-endedness of placemaking supports a wide range of activity. Children hunt for and gather materials; they build and modify their space; and they embellish it with finds and treasures. They climb, chase and challenge one another. Stories live in the dens and hideouts children create. New narratives about events of daily life, movies seen, the lives of dolls, action figures, and cherished animals enter and enliven life inside. Groups form and friendships grow in the shelter of a camp, fort, or snow cave.

Play and placemaking are closely connected in many ways but are also not the same. Clearly the forts, dens, and hideouts created during placemaking become places for play, contexts for pretend play, and backdrops for games. But, at the same time, placemaking is the serious work of children exploring, testing, understanding, and making their mark on the world.

More than Building

Placemaking goes well beyond building forts and hideouts. In this dynamic process of exploration, change, and discovery, children are making a place for themselves in the world. They are mastering materials, building confidence and competence, forging relationships, and shaping a sense of self.

German social intellectual Walter Benjamin noted in 1928,

Children are irresistibly drawn to the detritus generated by building, gardening, housework, tailoring, or carpentry… In using these things they do not so much imitate the works of adults as bring together, in the artifact produced in play, materials of widely differing kinds of new, intuitive relationships. Children thus produce their own small world of things within the greater one.

Photo credit: Vergeront

Children use materials and objects, their knowledge of how the world works, and ingenuity in placemaking. Loose parts, found objects, and discarded building materials are instrumental in transforming a space. They use what’s at hand: bricks, boards, boxes, and blankets; clay, cloths, crates, and cushions; sand, seeds, sticks, stones, string, and stumps; Legos, leaves, and license plates. 

Random as they might be, collected objects and materials contain valuable and actionable information about altering a space and realizing a vision. When they gather, move, and arrange materials; when they dig holes; when they drag a piece of sheet metal, children experience properties such as weight, mass, strength, and rigidity. They discover what different materials can do. Sticks help outline boundaries; some sticks bend while others are brittle and don’t. Blankets, burlap, and branches span a distance; stones can weigh down a blanket; carefully stacked stones become a tower. 

In exploring places, hideouts, and landscapes, children are constructing an understanding of space and themselves. They measure space, size, and dimensions using their bodies, hands, eyes, and voices. Through their movements, they know the prepositions of space: under, above, inside and out, through, between, and on top of. Being in or out, up, down, or underneath, children encounter distant views and unusual perspectives, uncover new routes, and make connections to another time or place. With playmates, they work to make something big happen together. They share secrets, make-up ideas, negotiate how to work together, make up stories, layer in rules, and take on roles.

Children come to know something about themselves as well through placemaking. They

Photo credit: Chicago Children's Museum

test themselves against the space, undertake feats, push their limits, and explore their identity. Can I pull myself up on this branch? Can I make my idea happen? Who am I in this space? What can I be here? They search for risk and the promise of challenge perhaps in building small fires, sharpening tools against a rock, or testing the ice for thickness. Moments of fear and triumph sweeten the experience.

As placemakers, children are experimenters, agents of change in charge of transformation. They find a spot that is undefined or open to being redefined and dictate its meaning. As they incorporate new materials and ideas, they continue to modify the space, its qualities, and meaning. This opportunity, ordering the physical surroundings in ways that express their own ideas and interests, is rare for children, but it engenders a feeling of competence and satisfaction. That anonymous patch of dirt transformed into a place with an original identity, yields a tangible, lasting sense of accomplishment.

Often children find something in a space that speaks to them of possibilities and invites them to investigate their connection to the world. In working that space, they develop a relationship with it and come to know it, from its smell, sounds, or silences and from what has taken place there. A special place can stay with children even when they are not there, over time, into their adult lives. Who doesn’t remember a place from childhood, created or found; a shelter for play, friendship, hiding; visited through changing seasons; and revisited over time in our memories?

Related Resources

• Place Matters
• Planting for Play
• Placemaking in Museums
• It's a Great time for Making Forts
• Play and Place: Transforming Environments
• Inspiring Young Place-makers
• Children's Special Places: Exploring the Role of Forts, Dens and Bush Houses in Middle Childhood
• Dialogues with Places

Originally posted March, 2018

It's a Great Time for Making Forts

Photo Credit: Boston Globe

At the same time that Clovid19 has closed down restaurants, gyms, shops, and museums, it seems to have opened up the world of children’s fort making.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed a lot about fort making lately—inside, outside, under tables or beds, in closets or corners. I’ve also heard from parents that the forts their children are making are impressive. I gather from examples here, here, and here that others are noticing this as well.

 

We shouldn’t be surprised. Fort making is what children do and need to do. They find forts, make forts, and play in forts, indoors and out, in the spaces where they live and spend time. Fort making is an enduring expression of childhood. It is something I did as a child, my sisters and brothers did, and, it is likely, you probably did too.

 

While some people see fort building now as a result of boredom from spending many and long days at home during the pandemic, I see it as what children finally get to do with time, space, and freedom courtesy of the pandemic.

 

As children spend more time at home and explore their home environments, they have an opportunity to know familiar spaces more deeply and discover the fort-making potential of rooms, alcoves, in between and out-of-the-way spaces. Children have time–more time, down time, time with fewer distractions and interruptions. Stretches of time and time over several days allow them to return to a project or work with ideas from one day mulled over and put into action the next day and the next. Many children are enjoying a rare freedom from structured activities and close parental monitoring. In fact, parents and caregivers working from home, homeschooling, and trying to create good family times together are less available for structuring or directing children’s activities, including fort building. And it’s not such a bad thing, actually.

 

What’s in a Fort?

At their most basic, forts are small spaces-within-spaces created by children from available materials where children can be alone or with someone else in a world of their making.

 

When we think about children’s fort making, we tend to think first about the structures themselves, constructions that cover a wide and interesting range of structures and spaces. Typically, these are original, one-of-a-kind structures indoors or out referred to as caves, cubby holes, cozy spaces, huts, dens, and forts. They might be tucked into an alcove, under the stairs, between chairs, under the desk, or in bed. Made of blankets, sheets, cushions, crates, cardboard tubes and boxes, duct tape or furniture, as well as leaves, snow, and branches, they come in all shapes, sizes, materials, and conditions. Sometimes appearing messy and unassuming, they might look like a huddle of furniture or a pile of laundry.

 

A hallmark of childhood, children’s fort making begins around 4 years, increases through 7 years, and continues until around 12 or 13 years. Active,

curious, and resourceful as fort makers, children gather, collect, and arrange materials and objects, dragging chairs, stacking cushions, or draping sheets, towels, or blankets over chairs. They define their space, make a pleasing arrangement, and embellish it with cherished objects. Working alone and sometimes with others, they draw on a wide range of capabilities and skills, create a small world for themselves, make up and act out stories, read, or pretend to be invisible.

Fort making is not a linear step-by-step activity packaged in a kit. Rather, it emerges from a dynamic, relatively seamless, back-and-forth stream of processes and activities. Through play, building, and exploration and offering discovery and change, children carve out and shape space for themselves in the world. Like play, fort making is directed by the child, propelled by an idea or inspiration, and intrinsically satisfying. Part exploration, fort making involves an investigation of materials, objects, and environments and their properties using their senses and a range of skills. Children’s fort making transforms space, reveals new perspectives, encourages capabilities, and expands possibilities.

 

These brief descriptions of forts, fort makers, and the process of building hardly begin to uncover how fort making is a rich, productive, and satisfying experience for children. To explore more how these elements engage in the messy, sprawling, open-ended, joyful fort making for children, throughout and across childhoods, I’ve framed five constructs. They are informed by literature, observation, photos, drawings of forts, and adults’ memories and stories of fort building. In real-life fort making, these constructs easily overlap and constantly interact with one another. Looked at individually, however, each shines a light on an experience or opportunity that is compelling to the child, memorable for adults, and supportive of the development and learning in the years between.  

•      When it comes to fort making, children are in charge.

•      Fort making stands a little outside of ordinary time and space and transforms it.

•      In fort making, children make sense of others, themselves, and the world.

•      In fort making, children create a 3-D version of their imagination that they can inhabit.

•      Fort making is opportunistic.

 

 

Five Constructs on the Nature of Fort Making                    

When it comes to fort making, children are in charge.

In houses, apartments, garages, sheds, and yards, children interact with space and materials and make something happen. They decide what to build, where to build and how to build. Drawing on their knowledge of physical space, they start by selecting a promising place for a fort. They choose furniture and objects, gather coverings, and they combine them in particular ways to create a structure that suits them. As they order their physical surroundings and embellish spaces with their belongings and selected objects that appeal to them, they follow their ideas and interests, encounter new ones, and weigh new choices.

 

The opportunity to do this—to be in charge of an activity and influence what happens in a small corner of their world—is something that is all too rare for most children. In their fort, children have the freedom to explore space, investigate objects, cultivate friendships, and engage with the imaginary. In deciding whether the walls should be two or three cushions high; whether the fort is a starship, a library, or a cave; and which story ideas will be acted out, children are exercising control in ways that matter to them. Of no small significance is children’s control of the boundary between inside and out, where their space ends, who or what comes in—or doesn’t.  

Fort making stands a little outside of ordinary time and space and transforms it.

Forts originate in the physical and imaginative space and time of homes, families, and daily schedules.

In the physical world, the child looks around a very familiar home space with new eyes. They scout seemingly empty spaces, small spaces, out-of-the-way places, and openings where they can fit and build in spaces often overlooked by others. When interesting as well as available space is found under the stairs, in a closet, or even in a bathtub, the child appropriates that space. When it comes to claiming space for their purposes, being under the table is being under the radar for children; being out of the way opens a door.

 

Time is a critical dimension in fort making and it’s not ordinary time. Squeezed in between family routines and scheduled activities, fort time is incidental. As children slip in-and-out of the space, they move between recurring themes, alternate worlds, and multiple time frames. Typical rules about time don’t necessarily apply. Instead, real- and imaginary-time mix. Children imagine that they are some place else and they pretend it is real. The view out the window is a part of the backdrop and becomes part of the story. Movement from day to night can happen in a flash. Or no time at all is specified.

 

In fort making, children make sense of others, themselves, and the world.

While typically small, forts are packed with multi-sensory information. Constructing the fort, repeatedly moving in and out of it, or making room for a friend occurs through a constant dialogue between the child and physical space, its materials and their properties. Children are picking up sensory information about how their body fits into the fort, how the fort’s sides moved when bumped; how outside sounds come in.

 

Forts are social as well as physical spaces. They are made by children for themselves and, often, for friends. The fort's physical features, its size, enclosure,

and lighting influence whether this is a retreat for one or makes room for a friend; a space that invites imagining together, sharing secrets, playing games, and growing friendship.

 

In these special places, children find something of themselves that is difficult to find elsewhere. Choosing and arranging materials, they practice existing skills, explore new ones, and enjoy feelings of accomplishment and confidence. When children experience themselves as builders, makers, and creators, they have important evidence that they can have an impact on the world.

 

Forts are also where children can explore being themselves. These seemingly simple structures are an expression of self, intention, imagination, and competence. They offer solitude, separation from family, retreat, and independence. A fort can be a place to explore being someone else.

 

In fort making, children create a 3-D version of their imagination that they can inhabit.

Avid makers and doers, children make many things: drawings, collages, cardboard gizmos, clay bowls, dioramas. Very seldom, however, do they create something at a scale that allows them to crawl into, occupy, and experience the creation that has emerged from their imagination.

 

Forts may have a small physical footprint, but they likely have a large footprint in the child’s mind and imagination. In forts, children’s imaginations take on physical form, forms that they can occupy. As they enter this real and imagined space, the child is immersed in ideas made real through objects, materials, choices, skills, creativity, and persistence. Inside the child encounters a place that mirrors their imagination. They connect with feelings of being in another place, with the drama of a challenge, or the perspective of someone else.

 

Being inside small, personal, often unusually-shaped spaces exercises the connection between imagination and the body. In these spaces, children notice their bodies; they explore what they can do and how they move. With gestures, actions, and new positions, they move in ways that play out what is running through their imaginations and filling the fort.

 

Being inside that space shaped by the imagination gives a glimpse into the possible. The child sees how everything—materials, ideas, memories, songs—can be an opportunity for arranging and making; how parts of the world might be changed, and how the child is able to effect those changes.

 

Fort making is opportunistic.

This free style form of construction in incidental spaces with found, discarded, and random objects, not surprisingly, incorporates unusual features which make forts one-of-a-kind creations. Varied shapes, chance features, repurposed household goods can both inspire and drive a fort’s design.. Unlike the large numbers of regularly shaped blocks and bricks in building sets, fort-making materials come in unusual shapes and limited numbers without directions to follow.

 

Photo credit: 1,000 Awesome Things

Found and repurposed materials speak to the child of possibilities. Children notice, investigate, and exploit various features; they test their properties as they incorporate them into their structure. Using ingenuity and resourcefulness, children come up with ways to create a fort: drape blankets, wedge pillows into place; anchor sheets by tucking them into a drawer; place the hole in the blanket to be a window; put two chairs together. What is found is used and valued.   

 

Provisional, temporary, changing over time, and sometimes a permanent work-in-progress, the opportunistic nature of fort making means that forts are in perpetual beta. Based on failures and new finds, children develop, test, and revise their forts; they make substitutions when borrowed supplies must be returned to the closet or kitchen. Children themselves are changing, learning from their fort making, and bringing exposure to new ideas to their building.

 

It seems that, as the child works on the fort, the fort works on the child.

 

 

*   *   *   *   *

My thanks to Tom Bedard, Saki Iwamoto, Nina LeSaout, Aaron Sennitt, and Lani Shapiro

Learning With and From Objects: Part 2

At one with materials

After thinking about children’s engagement with objects in museums over many years, I returned to some persistent questions as I read Sharon Shaffer’s book, ObjectLessons and Early Learning.

My interest in children learning with and from objects began decades ago and brought me to a career in museums. With each twist and turn in my work, I have recognized new aspects about children’s object-based learning in museums, wondering about the nature of the objects we select for them, the child’s and adult’s roles in exploring objects together, and the settings in which object-based learning occurs.  

My continuing exploration looks into what traditional museums do well with and for young children and what children’s museums do well with and for children. It is intended to both honor and nudge both types of museums to better serve children’s fascination with objects and their eagerness to learn from them.

Museums are public places defined by objects experienced and enjoyed in a wide range of ways by people across the life span, from infants to nonagenarians. Visitors to art museums, historic houses, science centers, zoos, children’s museums, and natural history museums engage and connect with objects. They may enjoy a rare glimpse of Leonardo’s Codex Leicester, join a tour of Hilma af Klint’s paintings, participate in an object lesson at the science center’s wave tank, or add sticker dots to the White Room at the children’s museum.

There are many ways to think about and explore objects in museums. Both traditional museums and children’s museums do. They are interested in and find ways to engage children in exploring objects, as sources of new information about the material world; as containers for stories; connections to another time and place, to home and everyday life; and as sparks to children’s capabilities and creativity.

The Great Beginning

Getting to know the world of things
Children's Museum of Southern Minnesota

The world of things is immediately and concretely available to children everywhere, even newborns. Early exploration of objects even in infancy is responsible for children’s early, spectacular progress in understanding the world and themselves. Simply put, exploring objects is essential to living and learning.

We know developmentally, from watching children play and from interactions with them that they are very interested in objects. Many developmental changes, in fact, are marked by how young children understand, use, and relate to objects. When infants shake, bang, wave, and mouth objects, they are learning about the objects’ properties and what an object does. Babies realize during their first 6 months that an object is present even when unseen. That two-fisted toddler with an object in each fist eagerly goes after a third object. Figuring out how to grasp, release, and pass objects back-and-forth is a major problem-solving feat. Between one and two years, babies use objects for symbolic play. That shoebox is a bed; the shell is a bathtub for a fairy; the cardboard tube is a telescope.

At a very early age, objects are central to all aspects of a child’s life. Everyday objects are labeled, named, and described with glee. An emerging sense of self is expressed in “my” chair or a favorite piece of clothing. Comforting objects—the stuffed animal, book, or blanket—are kept close for assurance. Handing an object to someone creates a social connection. The mirror, a fascinating object in itself, is especially so with a toddler’s face smiling back.  

Objects mark personal milestones throughout early childhood. When the pants are too short or shoes are too small, a child beams at the evidence of getting “bigger.” A hand-made clay bowl expresses a sense of accomplishment in understanding how to work with clay. Learning to ride a bike signifies practiced coordination and greater independence.

Fascination with objects doesn’t end at 18 months, 3, 5, or 8 years. What does change, however, is how children understand and engage with objects. In more actively occupying an expanding world, with a growing knowledge base, increasing ability to think abstractly, and new lenses of meaning, children’s knowledge of and relationship to the world of things grows rapidly.

What might sound like an early childhood development summary, in fact, establishes that objects are fundamentally connected to children’s learning and living. From infancy on, in every domain, children’s interest in objects, playing with and learning from them, is a powerful, nearly unstoppable life force that informs them about themselves, their capabilities, and the richness of the world.

What Objects Say

If objects matter enormously to children’s play, learning, and connection to the world and others, now and in their future, then selecting objects for children in museums also matters enormously.

Noah's Ark, The Skirball, (Los Angeles)

Objects are what define museums and what museums have in great number and variety. With their natural specimens, cultural artifacts, and works of art, museum collections are wonderful resources for beautiful, rare, intriguing, remarkable, striking, and marvelous objects. Many museums are generous in sharing objects in appropriate ways such as on tours and in object-based lessons that introduce children to the stories, beauty, and information they contain. Education collections make less-than perfect artifacts, poorly documented specimens, reproductions and models, and everyday objects and materials available for hands-on use in programs, discovery rooms, and family centers. While objects and materials are increasingly available in more museum settings, in most traditional museums access is generally limited.

Children’s museums offer quantities of objects often across virtually the entire museum, inside and out. There are bubbles and bubble wands; scoops, sieves, shovels, and funnels; costumes; balls, race cars, grocery store food (fabric or plastic?). There are Keva Planks, face paints, puppets, and sometimes even a real car, motorcycle, or tractor. There may be a walk-in scale model of a  pioneer cabin or a barn. Many objects are transformed interacting with light, water, and air; light, air, and water become objects to explore. Children’s artwork hangs along with art by community artists. In the early years area are mirrors, wooden vehicles, small foam blocks, shakers and noisemakers.

And often enough, teddy bears are in the restaurant; the wooden cars are in the water; and costumes are underfoot. While plentiful, objects here are sometimes viewed as ubiquitous, lacking in variety, quality, and condition.

Interestingly, both traditional and children’s museums limit children’s access to an array of objects out of concern for keeping objects in specific areas, object condition, and durability—but for different reasons. The rare or authentic object is favored in the case of traditional museums, pushing interesting objects out of the reach of children. Easy access to objects is favored in children’s museums, undermining the value of quality objects for children.  

Telfair Museum, Savannah GA

Yet, in between is a vast expanse of objects and materials that are fascinating to children, possess suitable complexity, and spark questions and ideas. Museums need to know this territory on behalf of children by:

  §  Observing children as they engage with objects, their choices, and language and what objects they collect;

  §  Sharpening their insights into the materials, features, and details of objects that capture and sustain interest, encourage resourcefulness, elicit stories, and invite connections;

  §Exploring the trade-offs between heavy use, durability, and the quality of objects;

  §  Expanding the search for everyday objects, loose parts, tools, expressive media, found objects, real stuff, and unconventional materials; and

§  Building a shared vocabulary capable of describing objects and making meaningful distinctions among terms like authentic, accurate, real, and real life.

Freedom to Explore

In any museum setting, a glorious array of objects and materials that invites and sustains children’s engagement accomplishes little without freedom to explore.

Exploring freely is similar to a dialogue; it builds on interests and capabilities and reveals new ones. Noticing how a prism changes light; crumpled paper resembles a bird; a set of antlers feel to the touch; and metal washers almost fly through the air before landing on a giant magnet activates this exchange.  

Amazeum, Bentonville AR

Time to interact with an object over and over again reveals vital information that extends exploration. The child grasps flexible tubing; wiggles it in different ways; looks through it; bends it into a circle. Touching, squeezing, smelling, seeing, listening (and, yes, sometimes licking) tell more about an object, and what it can and can’t do. Exploring objects might mean taking them apart, putting them together again, and wondering how an object would work if parts were put together differently.

  

Object dialogues with potential require longer investigations without interruption. Just as two minutes is hardly long enough for a good conversation, it is not enough for a meaningful exploration of an interesting object. New discoveries, new questions, and remixing ideas have barely started. Engagement with peers, their ideas, and previous experiences have yet to enrich this dialogue.

While children can figure out a great deal about objects messing about on their own, adult support and conversation can add a richness to these endeavors. Joining the child’s exploration begins with noticing what the child’s eyes notice, not channeling the interaction to a specific lesson or objective. These are conversations that can support children in making connections between an object and previous experiences with similar objects and materials, answering questions, or introducing new information of interest to the child. They are also opportunities for children to express ideas and new understandings or explore complex ideas like identity, caring, and inclusion.

Freedom to explore opens the door to the kind of experience and transforming of an object into a new way of knowing it that Elee Wood and Kiersten Latham write about in The Objects of Experience.

Context Matters

Sand play in the quarry
 Children's Museum of Southern Minnesota

All objects exist in a context from which they acquire meaning. The setting in which objects are experienced can be simple with little relevant information or rich with information that helps make sense of the object and find connections to it.

Museum spaces, whether galleries, studios, classrooms, or outdoors, convey information about the objects and activities selected and presented. While the contextual approach varies among museums and even within a single museum, the physical setting is, nevertheless, integral to how visitors experience objects, artifacts, specimens, works of art, loose parts, tools, and props.

Because children rely on their senses and relatively limited previous experiences to know objects, context is an important part of how children engage with and know objects. Context offers clues about what a space is about, sparks ideas about how to engage with available objects, creates personal connections, and supports children’s learning. Consequently, children’s museums have emphasized creating a context for objects, sometimes very elaborate and immersive.

In this contextual approach, there are not just pieces of hardware, washers, wing nuts and molly bolts, but there is a wall of hardware, bins, a work surface in a hardware store environment. A grocery store, familiar in many children’s museums, is a familiar everyday context for even very young children who know a great deal about markets from errands with parents, and are also attracted to the many objects on the shelves. These spaces are outfitted with real objects and tools that characterize them. 

When the object is the context

Fewer traditional museums outside of historic houses provide a relevant information-filled context for object exploration. Period rooms in some art and history museums show objects in an accurate historical and cultural context. In discovery rooms, hands-on spaces, discovery carts, and family centers, traditional museums increasingly take setting into account to provide contextual information for meaning making. Hands-on exhibits, however, in an otherwise non-interactive museum are quite different from hands-on access to objects all across a hands-on museum.

Contexts and situating the object in a supportive and relevant environments serve children well. Beyond the familiar grocery store exhibit is a wide range of inviting contexts.

• The object and the context are the same inside a bus or the Japanese House 
• Swaying in a textile playground
• Thousands of sticker dots transform the white room, shifting foreground and background 
• Environments that invite exploration of color, light, objects, and materials
• Outdoor gardens, forests, sculpture gardens
• Object Theaters such as Mill CityMuseum’s Flour Tower 

Access and Availability

Ultimately, children's engaging and meaningful encounters with objects relies on access and availability. Children benefit from more opportunities to engage with a wider variety of compelling objects and materials, across more museum settings.

For both traditional and children’s museums, increasing access to interesting objects relies on resources and resourcefulness around this priority. If a museum intends to be object centered for children, then availability is a question of how, not whether. 

Museum of Math, New York, NY

In more museum settings, availability of objects and materials is increasing. Some of the popularity of maker spaces in museums is, likely as objects-rich settings with materials, supplies, tools, resources, and machines. More art museums like the Twin Cities' mia and the Denver Art Museum make hands-on materials available to children in family areas. Discovery rooms and touch-and-see labs, spaces set aside from traditional museum galleries in many natural history museums, feature objects and artifacts for children’s hands-on exploration.

As object rich as they are, children’s museums nevertheless have significant opportunities to increase the variety of object-based experiences in exhibits, programs, and facilitated moments across the museum. Opportunities and possible directions for both children’s and traditional museums come from both fields including:

        • A teaching collection where objects are handled under the trained eye of a museum educator.

• Sharing stations such as Nature Exchange at Kidspace in Pasadena where children bring and trade nature objects

• Incorporating object explorations into programs and exhibits by prepared staff and volunteers: hidden objects; collections of everyday objects like wheels, "I Spy" tours.  

• Guided exploration of artwork already displayed in many children’s museums—an artist in residence, children’s artwork, etc.

• Finding quantities of unconventional materials. Bubble wrap has fascinating qualities especially in large quantities which invite wrapping, dancing, and popping.

• Recruiting and training docents in children’s museums to facilitate engagement with objects.  

• Exploring the possibility of ecosystems of objects: grow gourds, collect and dry seeds, make shakers and containers; explore along with gourd containers from different cultural groups.

Reimagining Children’s Object Exploration in Museums

If children’s engrossing, enriching experiences with objects is a value for museums, then thinking about what this looks like in deep and informed ways is necessary. Meaningful child-object engagement relies on: 

• Believing in children’s capabilities to learn with and from objects from a very early age;

• Creating a collection of objects recognized for their compelling qualities for children’s engagement;

• Allowing for time and freedom to engage and connect with objects;

• Support from a more knowledgeable partner, peer or adult, who follows the child’s interest;

• Rich, relevant context that creates connections; and

• Access and availability to objects across the museum.

       I hope my interest and concern about how museums create opportunities for children to engage with objects and how they might do it better will encourage others to explore further.

Resources

• Steven Conn. (2010) Do Museums Still Need Objects?  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press

• Rebecca Schulman Herz, Museum Questions: https://museumquestions.com/2015/02/09/why-are-childrens-museums-museums/

• Rebecca Schulman Herz. “Where are the objects? Why is this a museum?” Curator (May 2017).

• Eugene Dillenburg “What, if Anything, Is a Museum?” Exhibitionist. Spring 2011.

• Hilde Hein . The Matter of Museums. Journal of Museum Education, Vol. 36, Number 2, Summer 2011

• Phillip Kennicott. “Is it a museum or not? The question is worth asking.” The Washington Post. October 2018.

• Scott G. Harris. 2002. Perspectives on Object-centered Learning in Museums. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlenbaum Associates Publishers.

• Elizabeth Wood and Kiersten F. Latham. (2016) The Object of Experience: Transforming Visitor-Object Encounters in Museums. New York: Routledge.