The balance between sensorimotor, open, heuristic activities, and the purpose driven activities of practical life

Tomas, 13 months old, working with his hands in concentration, 

his stance wide to provide the stability he needs for this new erect position

This question from the Prague presentation of the Cosmic Task of 0-3: 

Could you please address the balance between sensorimotor, open, heuristic activities, and purpose driven activities of practical life, and keeping “material” order and “neatness” of the environment, especially how we introduce/present this? 

The above photo might illustrate the quick answer to this question: PEACE

If a child is at peace, if he is concentrated, then we have succeeded in offering materials and an environment in which the child finds what he needs for his self-development.

Tomas and Byrne at 8 months

Tomas and Byrne are twins who I was with from 5 months to 18 months of age in their home. I spent the transition years (between working at a Montessori school in California and moving to Italy) working privately for families so that between "contracts" I had the freedom to spend a few months in Italy observing at the Nidos (0-3 programs). Tomas and his brother Byrne, along with three other groups of children (in-home micro young children's community environments) provided me with experimental spaces where I could integrate the heuristic materials into the environment and observe. 

Tomas at 10 months

Follow the Child: 
When children are active with their bodies or their hands, being social with others, or deep in concentration in a world of their own, they are working and moving and sensing and their brain is working away at integrating movement and sensorial inputs. We don't control much of anything other than the environment, and children will present the behavior they present, even if perhaps what we would hope is that they sit at the table and find something interesting to concentrate on using just their hands. So the environment needs to offer all of these possibilities at all times and the children will find what they need. 

Tomas 13 months

It is not so much how do WE find a balance between these types of materials, rather how do we ALLOW each child to follow his inner rhythm and do the open-ended heuristic play, the sensorimotor highly active movement based work, or the practical work THAT HE OR SHE IS INCLINED TO DO AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT, such as inserting things where they "don't belong" or engaging in some sensory motor adventures, like balancing on a chair standing up. 

 Byrne at 16 months putting pegs in holes

Byrne testing out the clave music stick in the hole

The materials for practical life are ever present because we need to prepare a snack every morning, because we need to set the table for lunch each day, because we must clean up after ourselves, scrubbing a table or a chair. When a child (or often two or three because when they want to work for the community they are showing a social level of advanced connection) wants to set the table, he will spontaneously begin to do this work. Everything is stored where the children can reach it. He has been watching others, perhaps adults, perhaps older children, who have been doing it for a long time. In the case of Sabrina's Nido in the town of Cardano al Campo (one of the programs who allowed us to video for the Prague films) the children are never given a lesson on how to set the table, they just know how to because they have observed the steps involved for a long time. An adult is present, however, every day when it is time to set the table, and can offer guidance when needed.

"Children who feel that they have a wide freedom in their choice of objects and their uses have no need for presentations. On the contrary, this risks to deprive them of their own experience of “teaching” themselves to do this or that, taking away the pleasure of discovery, the only thing that leads to intense concentration. 

The educator simply performs all actions slowly in front of the child, showing him how to turn a faucet on and off, carry a dish, or use a small knife to slice a banana, but she is not giving a presentation in the strict sense, a request that is asking the child to do something he may not yet be ready for and perhaps one that does not at all correspond to the capabilities and interests of the child. This is an absolute imposition on the youngest child according to our experiences and observations."      GHF

The progression that Sabrina has observed is that generally speaking the practical work is the last phase in the progression. The movement work comes first: of circling around, pushing boxes, pulling a cart with a cord, climbing on boxes and bridges created by the children and their "heuristic cardboard box collection" (as seen in the Cosmic Task films). The open sensory motor work of scooping and pouring polenta into a funnel or pouring water into a pitcher and into a glass and back and forth over and over in deep concentration is much more static, the body is in one place, but the hands and the eyes and the arms are all doing an intense work of integration. The small lengths of chains into the plastic water bottles, the cones and tubes into others of different dimensions, the blocks of different dimensions that get stacked or lined up, all of this is sensory motor integration. The purpose is an internal need to move to learn and associate things together, so we cannot say it has no purpose. 

sponging off the table is a motor exploration before the 

social idea of contributing to the life of the community comes to mind

The order of the environment is always important and especially the re-ordering after the activity period, when a child goes outside and puts away what he was doing, or when the morning snack is served and everyone joins the community meal at the table, before going home, etc. With the use of "heuristic objects" in the environment there are many materials being used at the same time and there is no rule that one thing has to go back onto the shelf before using a different kind. Integration of diverse objects as invented by the child is the purpose. The beauty of the heuristic objects is that anything can be combined with anything else, and the diversity of experiences and explorations is infinite.

 Byrne inserting top and bottom pieces of the Russian nesting dolls (monkeys actually)

Tomas inserting the toilet paper holder parts where there is the spring

The idea of training the littlest people to use one thing and then clean it up and then pick another thing is contrary to their nature, unlike the older child in the Casa dei Bambini. The oldest ones in a Nido (0-3) or Young Children's Community are capable and interested in this but it has been a process for them, absorbing the culture each day as the adults support the process of re-ordering. 

The same children who have begun to set the table after the bulk of the children go outside to play, who know that when the children come back in they will wash their hands and eat lunch, those same children know that when the activity period is over the materials go back into boxes or baskets where the collections live. 

Tomas and Byrne used this box with holes with countless types of things to insert

a hair roller

popsicle sticks

red dowels from another toy

wine corks

square pegs that didn't fit

The spontaneous nature of classification can be seen here when these older children place all of the same kinds of cones in first and then the next kind, or the biggest blocks and then the smaller ones until they have reordered all of the blocks in the box from large to small. The younger ones simply deposit all of the objects back into the boxes that they came out of.

External order leads to internal order ... which leads to external order... putting things away shows that the external order of things (the social rules) has been internalized. 

"The category of materials Elinor called heuristic objects offers a diversity of exploratory opportunities: containers and things to put into them, making interesting combinations by pairing types of objects following the binary modality and creating an opportunity for the type of activity that is the signature for this age group. Sometimes the children play with these things by themselves but often there are spontaneous exchanges between the children. No suggestions, interventions or prompting on the part of the adult are needed as the materials speak for themselves and each child uses them in precisely his own way. When the work time is over, the process of putting everything away is carried out in a collaborative manner."   GHF