Nicole Land thinking with Sanja Todorovic and Jajiba Chowdhury

I was thinking of our earlier conversations about running and about being curious how different ways of moving happen in your classroom, and what these different ways of moving do. I think that there is something quite interesting happening in noticing how and why different materials are carried, and how they travel, around the space. On Friday, there were lots of materials that were scooped up and carried around in lots of different ways: a hat that was carried around on heads and in hands, the coloured see-through block pieces that children carried in threes as they stretched their hands to hold three at a time, some children cuddling baby dolls against their bodies as they walked them around and others holding the dolls by their ankles or arms as they walked, the paint from the activity that got stuck to fingers before it was washed off, and books that were carried by their covers or carefully held flat as they travelled from the book carpet to other spaces. There is so much moving with materials that is unfolding, and I am interested in wondering and paying attention to what these moving relations create – what happens when dolls or paint or blocks or books move in particular ways? What does this moving open up? How do we shape how children move with these materials – why, how?