Colorful sign that welcomes children to the Bubble Room.
According to Vygotsky, scaffolding for a student or child is when a support system is built to help the learner go from what they can do on their own to what they can do with assistance with the hopes of removing the assistance and the learner still maintaining their highest ability. This is exactly what two specific stations in the bubble room were meant to do. These stations had pulley systems for the child to make large bubbles by pulling down on the rope- one was a bubble wall and the other a bubble tube. These pulleys allowed for the child to pull as much as they could to form the bubble but also had a place for the adult to pull as well (higher up on the rope). With the adult putting a little more "elbow grease" into pulling, the child was capable of making a bubble whereas many of the children were not able to form bubbles without the slight assistance. The hope, when considering Vygotsky's scaffolding theory, is to teach the child to build those muscles while slowing retracting the assistance and eventually the child will be able to use the pulley system all on their own.
We all seemed captivated by the Bubble Room. Maybe it was the fact that we were indoors on a hot summer's day and wanted to be near splashing water, or maybe its because the room was full of bubbles, and who doesn't love bubbles? The Bubble Room was a great spot to watch interactions and there were two groups that caught my attention.
Scenario 1: Good job, Dad!
A mom and dad came into the Bubble Room with two children who appeared to be about two and four years old. All four of them started at this boom-like contraption with rope and pullies that made sheet of bubble when it was raised at just the right speed. The parents raised the boom over and over without really engaging the kids. In fact, they seemed more interested in lifting the boom than either of the kids, so much so that the older boy walked away.The young girl kept putting her finger in the bubble sheet and popping it and her mom asked her to stop doing it.The parents don't seem all that concerned that their son is out of their sight line in another part of the room. They seem highly interested in trying to get the girl to pull the rope to raise the boom, but she doesn’t know that she has to pull it slowly to make a bubble and the parents don’t tell her, so she too loses interest.The father leaves, presumably, to join the boy, but ends up blowing bubbles on his own at another table.The boy saw what dad was doing, but wasn’t interested, so he went to another part of the room to wait in line for a different activity.
It seemed to me that the parents were able to understand how surface tension works in making bubbles so they were having an enriching experience. Making bubbles was easy for them. Eventually, the parents stopped watching their children entirely and started snapping photos of one another making bubbles.The girl started hanging on mom's arm, the brother was still in another part of the room, and the mom was generously praising dad’s bubble making. The brother, once he left his family, seemed to be having a good time, while the sister was unsuccessful with the bubble boom and didn't leave her mother's side to try an activity. She showed her feelings by hanging on her mother and whining. The only person who was praised was the dad. The daughter seemed to be having fun by popping the bubbles but was scolded because this interfered with mom's bubble making. Really, the only person who really wasn't having fun was the daughter because she was directed to a task that she neither understood, nor could do successfully. If I had the opportunity, I would have liked the chance to observe this family in another play space to see if the dynamics changed.
Scenario 2: Bubblehands!
I got to witness an honest-to-goodness social learning activity when a brother was teaching his sister how to hold her thumbs and index fingers together to turn her hands into a bubble wand. They were both making large bubbles and seemed be having great time. A younger boy approached the table, watched the pair, and mimicked what the older kids were doing. It took him a few tries to get it right, but eventually he succeeded in making a bubble.
Later, at the same table, a mother, son, and daughter stood together and the mom demonstrated how to make bubbles.The boy seemed reluctant to put his hands in the water approach bubble table.The sister immediately copied her mother and began trying to make bubbles.The sister was really engaged, but her brother looked like he’d rather be someplace else.Mom praised the bubble making saying “ooh!Good bubbles!” but she appeared to be giving the praise as a means to keep the kids engaged long enough so she can snap pictures.After the photo op, they stepped away with the brother not having gotten his hands wet.
Before I went to the museum, I decided that I wanted to keep my eyes and ears open for hovering, overly-praising parents. I had just read Alfie Kohn's article "Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job!" and I was ready to dissect the praise-heavy parenting of the museum-goers. Other than the mom praising the dad, I didn't see all that much undeserved praise. What I did see in abundance was parents who compulsively redirected their children to engineer a photo op, or try to get them interested in an activity that they had chosen for their child. The kids who seemed to be having the most fun were exploring at their own pace and in their own way. The museum trip was their instructional anchor, but the children who seemed the most happy and engaged were those who chose authentic tasks and created their own solutions.
The Toddler and Preschool room at the Children’s Museum is a bright and attractive place. No children under three were allowed in the space and the attendant at the door ensured that no children could leave without an adult. The entire room is constructed to 'kidscale'; this rather short adult felt like a giant as I towered over the climbing area, car, water table, and open carpet reading area. Perhaps because even the most petite adults felt ungainly in the space, most parents and caregivers chose to sit in the adult sized chairs lining the margins of play area Unique in that it was the only area we observed where there weren’t hovering parents trying to manage children’s play.
Scenario 1: Tiger vs. Train I observed the train table where I watched children, mostly toddlers, negotiate the tiny train cars along the track. All but one of the children that I observed at the train table were boys. The first child I watched was a boy wielding a plastic tiger (I'll call him tiger-boy)who was trying to derail the train of another child (I'll call him train-boy). When the train-boy screeched at tiger-boy, the caregiver of the train-boy came over and scolded him for screeching, while the mother of tiger-boy calmly redirected her child without telling him not to attack other kids' toys. The boy who had been scolded abandoned the train while the kid with the tiger grabbed a second toy, a lion, and proceeded to bang them on the train cars. The reactions of both caregivers in this situation really bothered me. Both boys were engaging in play that was fun for them, but when the play of the train-boy was disrupted by what tiger-boy was doing, train-boy cried, either because he was angry or wanted help. Instead of being supported, he was 'shushed' and left the train table. I do think that tiger-boy's caregiver should have corrected her child or asked him to apologize to train-boy. I doubt train-boy understood why he was being scolded, and though he looked like he was having fun at the train table, he was no longer motivated to play there after this interaction.
Scenario 2: The Rules of Attraction
This boy (I'll call him magnet-boy) was adding and adding and adding train cars together but wasn’t pushing them. He seemed most interested that the magnets stick the cars together and kept adding as many cars as he could find from other parts of the train table. He was soon joined by another child (I'll call him tunnel-boy) and they engaged in parallel play for a while. While they both seemed somewhat interested in what the other child was doing, they were each more focused on their own explorations. Tunnel-boy put together a string of cars and pushed them toward the tunnel. Instead of pushing the cars through the tunnel, he picked up each individual car and placed it on the opposite side of the tunnel. Whether or not he understood that he could have pushed the cars through the tunnel, I don't know, but he was engrossed in his activity as he very carefully picked up each car and placed it on the opposite side of the tunnel. Both boys seem more interested in sticking the cars together than moving them. They repeated these activities again and again at different parts of the table. It was not evident which adults were the parents of these children, though the boys did not seem to know one another.
The time on task for both of these children was BY FAR the longest of any I observed that day. They both seemed to be succeeding in the tasks that they had set for themselves. They were given the space to make sense of their environment and adapt to it and appeared to be happy and engaged throughout. Ormond reminds us that "Learners are happy when they succeed. But they also have feelings of pride and satisfaction when they attribute their success to internal causes- for instance, something they themselves have done (p. 204)." Neither boy had an adult swoop in to praise or admonish, to manage or redirect their play and of all of the children I saw at the museum, these two seemed to be having the most authentic play/ learning experience.
