Materials

‘’How Mastery of Materials Shapes Knowledge in a Child-led World”

Written By Teacher Stacy

My grandmother taught me how to cross-stitch when I was 4 years old.  Since then, I have also learned how to do embroidery and sew clothing and other household items.  With several decades of experience working with different types of threads and fabrics, I have learned how these materials talk to each other, how they work, and how they can be manipulated.  When I decided to learn embroidery after a few decades of cross stitch, it came relatively easily as I was already familiar with the materials.

We all have this knowledge for different materials; for a chef, you know how spices and herbs work together with proteins and vegetables.  A baker understands how to manipulate dough depending on the season and the temperature in your kitchen.  For a photographer, you have a sense for the focal length, shutter speed, and light are going to interact for the story you want to tell.  Your experience and expertise give you an understanding of how materials will work together before you even begin, so when you want to experiment with your materials, you start ahead of a new person, because of your familiarity with the materials.

One of the philosophical foundations of our school is the constructivist philosophy of John Dewey.  In Democracy and Education, he states:  “The things we are best acquainted with are the things we put to frequent use … Knowledge of things in that intimate and emotional sense … [is] from our employing them with a purpose. We have acted with or upon the thing so frequently that we can anticipate how it will act and react... We are ready for a familiar thing; it does not catch us napping, or play unexpected tricks with us. This attitude carries with it a sense of congeniality or friendliness, of ease and illumination; while the things with which we are not accustomed to deal are strange, foreign, cold, remote, "abstract."” (Chapter 14).  When we work with something frequently, we are ready for how it will behave.  Will the chalk draw smoothly on the table? On the ground? On a fence?  How will it be different if I get it wet?  These are foundational questions that children explore that enable them to be ready for more detailed art.  When they understand the materials they are using, they can then take them and work more expertly with them.

For example, one day I was making spirals with modeling clay.  A child asked me how I was making them, so I invited him to watch and practice.  He spent the next 15 minutes working with the clay, practicing over and over until he figured out how to use his hands to roll a snake, then using fine finger motor skills, he wound the clay around itself to create a spiral.

This child had many months of working with clay to know how hard to press, how much he could stretch the material, and that he could pinch two different snakes together to make a longer one.  When he was met with a goal, a purpose, he learned it readily as his body and brain were ready for it. 

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This goes hand-in-hand with our emergent curriculum, where learning comes out of interests expressed by the children.  Last spring, a child found an old seed on the ground.  He asked to plant it, telling me exactly what we would need to make the seed grow.  This came from working at home with his family in the garden and in our school garden.  He was never taught a specific lesson about seed germination, but he had enough time talking informally with his parents and teachers that he knew what to do.  We got a cup, some soil, and some water, and grew a “poky plant.”  He tended the plant for several months before we transplanted it into the garden.

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He knew the materials.  He knew what the plant needed, not because he was explicitly taught a lesson in the subject, but because he learned it through his own self-motivated experiences.  This is part of the beauty of a child-led curriculum.  Offering children the opportunity to explore many materials in many ways, they learn how to control their own bodies, the materials, and the environment to create what they want when they are ready for it.

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