Nicole Land thinking with Sanja Todorovic and Jajiba Chowdhury

After working to pay attention to how moving happened in communicative ways in the yard, we noticed that there seems to be something important happening with the slide. The playground has two side-by-side slides. We offered the children a provocation where we placed a blanket over one of the slides and we thought with the children about using half the blanket-covered slide. Jajiba and I were talking about the tensions in setting intentions for using the slide – when the children are interested in sliding with the blanket or taking it off of the slide, how do we balance that with sharing with them that our intention is to think together about using half the slide? How do we know when to push what our curiosities by ‘fixing’ the blanket on the slide (like, what happens when we use on side of the slide? Or, one slide is covered in the blanket – how can we use the other slide?) and when to notice how moving with the blanket is also a response to the provocation, also a way of the children engaging with the ‘problem’ we are offering them? I think that this is a question we need to keep negotiating with the children.