Going Deeper : Wonder Science 9am and 10:30am

Children work hard to Pay Attention.  
From the survival perspective, their life depends on it.

But what does it mean to pay Deliberate attention?  
How does the child decide when to consciously focus his mind?

Tools of the Mind by Elena Bodrova and Deborah J. Leong

Deliberate attention is different from Spontaneous attention 
(when they can't help but look at bright colored objects or loud noises, etc...).  i.e. the Television.
p.55

The ability to attend deliberately is a necessary skill for learning because the thing that is most attention-grabbing may not be the most important characteristic of what the child needs to learn about.

Children must learn to ignore competing or distracting information and to focus on specific characteristics that are important to solving a problem or learning a task.
p. 55

When children enter into the world of play...they first go through an exploratory stage where they are testing out the possibilities of the materials available.

This initial phase usually consists of surface type observations and when "problems" arise the child may stop play instead of delving into experimentation and problem-solving.

How do you know when a child is shifting from surface observations and random explorations to something deeper?

It has been very interesting to observe the children's reaction upon entering The Wonder Studio.  
For some children, they walk (or run ;) around the studio, with a strong urge to see all the offerings right away.  They spend a moment or two touching or manipulating the materials and then quickly move on.
They may spend much of the class in this exploratory mode, before they begin to settle in and get into more intentional play.

And for other children, it's difficult to get past the first table.  They quickly settle in and begin to explore the many possibilities at that one table or area.

What is our role in helping the children to go deeper and more intentional in their play?

These questions are important and I hope to go deeper into this inquiry with you during classes and after classes as we reflect.

Just as the children do...I hope we can spend much of our class tomorrow in Observation.  This will put us on the path to learn along with our children and see what our role is in providing a Scaffold to aide them in their problem-solving.