What really matters- Ideas about the properties of objects- Whitney reveals her many ideas about the properties of objects and the effects her actions have on objects in her everyday play with these objects. Whit now knows how things move and what it takes to make things move.  There are rules about how things move and that certain things cannot move without being moved. She is learning that physical laws cannot be violated.  She therefore believes that the ball cannot move by itself; a heavy stool needs great force to pick it up; a helium balloon floats to ceiling if let go. By repeating actions over and over again, whether it is rolling a ball down a hill or throwing a ball in the air, she is learning the rules that govern movement: about velocity, force, direction and gravity. She is learning to predict movement.     

How to put it into practice-

My Experience-

Whitney of course would never label any of these intuitions about objects and their movement in terms of velocity, force, etc. but she was revealing her understandings about them through her behavior. For example, When she went to pick up the heavy stool, instead of simply bending over as she would for a ball, balloon or something light, she would crouch extremely low anticipating its heaviness and predicting what she would have to do to move the stool (see Moving Stool video)

Tuning In-

Speculating about the implicit ideas that our toddlers hold based on the behavior they demonstrate is never easy but is always fun and worth the effort. In the second video (Floating Balloons), Whitney reveals her understanding that helium balloons float to the ceiling when not held. She learns this by repeating her action and letting it go again and again. She is actually even frustrated by the fact that once she let’s it go she cannot reach it again. And it is a healthy frustration as it is all a part of the learning process.

Extending/Bridging-

As our toddlers have more and more independent experiences with reality, frustration will become part of their life.  The physical laws of nature are never capricious, though - they always yield the same results, so that you cannot protect your child from frustration.  Your child will only discover the laws of nature by experimenting with objects, by manipulating them, by seeing how they work.   Failures, when things don’t fit or won’t go, foster an understanding of the laws of nature, logic and number. We can also always try to provide the minimal level of support so that our toddlers can do it and frustration does not overwhelm them to where they shut down.