Yesterday in my session, as part of our goal we were cleaning the floor. Due to recent done painting there were many paint drops on the floor. We were using different things to remove those paint from the floor. One child was reluctant to work. We all got busy working on cleanup. Slowly he joined.
He started cleaning with patti (Which is used to put putti or paste on the wall ). He tried keeping it vertical, it did not work. He sat flat on the floor. Then he started keeping patti at some angle, he was changing the angle and trying to clean. He was totally in to his world and after 10 minutes he came to me and shared: “Aunty, if you keep your blade like this then it woks fast.” The patti was making approximately 45 degree angle when he showed it.
I started thinking, what was that? So many questions popped up in my mind. Initially he was not interested to work at all. What if one of us had tried to convince him to work? Forget convincing, what if we had even got into asking him 5 questions trying to understand why he was not interested? Would that have helped or not helped? From that state of not willing to work, what made him think of trying out? There were multiple explorations happening there – trying different angles to trying different paint spots (some were oil paint spots while some were distemper). Are laboratories and pre set apparatus necessary for experimentation?
I enjoyed watching him. I could see learning opportunity in simple work:).