What really matters- Everyday objects in everyday contexts- There are almost an unlimited about of spots in any home for great exploration. Usually we freak out if toddlers get into spaces not intended for them but as long as your there and can ensure the exploration is safe almost nothing could be off limits. And every object found is a potential new vocabulary word and a source of new learning.

How to put it into practice-

My Experience-

Whitney, like most toddlers, love to get into cabinets. Frequently, we would shrug at the anticipated mess of Whitney pulling everything out. Our initial impulse was to stop her and avoid the hassle of the mess. But when possible instead of discouraging this curiosity, we tried to feed it and share Whit’s interest in what she found. (see cabinet hunt video)

Tuning In-

Although it is always easy to see what object Whitney is reaching for or inspecting, it is more difficult to crawl instead her head and speculate about what aspect she is interested in and what is her goal or what she is thinking about. Here in this video (see Cabinet hunt), Whit had pulled out a “brush/scrubber thingy” that was wrapped in plastic. She was looking intently at something for awhile before I noticed that the plastic bag had a hole in it and she was sticking her finger in the hole to touch the courser sand paper like surface of the brush (see Brush hole video). It is always worth the effort trying to tune into her interest as then I can better enter her play and exploration with an appropriate extension.

Extending/Bridging-

Here in this cabinet adventure, I probably missed the most important aspect of what Whit was exploring. Now that I watch the video, I see that she was comparing the course texture of the brush where the hole was versus the smooth surface of the plastic bag around the brush. Had I been more observant I could have joined in by mirroring her finger strokes of “rough” and “smooth” and then introduced a couple other textures to fill out the spectrum.

The other idea that came to mind too late is that I could have modeled and built vocabulary around what the brush was used for. After Whit had more fully explored the texture, I could have taken the foot brush and pretended to scrub my foot, narrating as I went along. I could have helped set a more elaborate script for how such brushes are used with all the vocabulary associated with it: “scrubbing”, “foot”, “skin”, etc.