Oh… It’s alive!

My little friend (three years old) got a hand puppet – a soft, white kitten. I put it on my hand and showed him. “Oh… It’s alive!”, he said. He was talking to the cat and cuddeling it kindly. Did he think it was a real kitten?

When the kitten stopped moving, pretending it was asleep, he said: “You have to move your fingers!” – He obviously knew the kitten was not moving by itself. But he absolutely did not want to put his own hand inside it and handle it himself… as if this would spoil his ability to imagine that the kitten was real. As long as someone else was handling it, the textile puppet and the real kitten could co-exist in the same time. In children’s play, there are no contradictions between reality and fantasy (Vygotsky, 2004), but rather synergy: The hand inside was activating the puppet’s movements, and the boy's experience of the movements was supporting his imagination.



Vygotsky, L. S. (2004). Imagination and Creativity in Childhood. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 42(1), 7-97. Retrieved from http://mesharpe.metapress.com/link.asp?id=265tnearjknc0220

Experiencing Environments

How does your home environment influence you feelings? Do you care if the floor is wooden - or just looks like wood? Or do you prefer polished, shiny surfaces? (Guggenheim museum in Bilbao)


Once upon a time, no other than natural materials were available; People used what their surroundings afforded them with: they ate meet they could catch, made clothes of fur and straw, built shelters of mud, or snow.


My friends fell in love with a 200 years old house in a little village in Northern Spain. (They did not tell me exactly that they “fell in live”, but I guess they did – Where would they otherwise find so much motivation and energy for the reconstruction that has been going on for years?) As far as possible they’ve been using the same natural materials the house was built with: mostly stone and wood, not to forget the roof tiles made by hand and shaped over a thigh. The old wooden posts and the rock walls, full of calcium and fossils, witness the time without machines. Shaped by bare hands and simple tools, the surfaces and lines in the house echo shapes from nature. The absence of geometry gives a special feeling … like going back in time … (Experience it by yourself! http://manzanela.com/en/manzanela.php )

Back in time people used what was available – today we use what we can afford. Compared to the speed of tree’s growing, artificial materials are produced much faster – no wonder natural materials are more expensive! But what is best for the global environment: to use (probably also misuse) the natural resources, or to produce unnatural materials (and waist)? Are we saving trees by using unnatural materials, or is the damage we make much larger? Which thoughts will they make about our time when they in 1000 years discover rests of linoleum with wood imitations?

The last three images are from the new building of Vestfold University College, where natural and human-made materials are "composed" in thrilling contrasts.

Interests Support Experience

Can you imagine three ten-year-old boys totally engaged in discussing textile qualities? They spent over 30 minutes in squeezing, lifting and stroking different types of off-white textile: This one is too light! This one is too shiny… too thick, too stiff… They used many words to describe a single quality: “When you jump, the pants are supposed to fly with you, but with a slights delay, and fall heavily down just a second after you’ve landed”.

In the discussions they recalled their visual experience of Prince of Persia’s pants from the Play Station game they’ve been playing. They desired to have pants just like that – and this was the purpose of our shopping trip that day. I promised to help them saw three pair of Prince-of-Persia-pants, but I was not competent enough to find the right materials. The boys knew exactly which specific qualities they needed from the off-white textile and ribbons for the vertical decorations on the sides. They had long discussions about the ribbon colors, width and pattern. And since the selection of ribbons was limited, they had to improvise by combining different ribbons side by side.

Their fascination with Prince of Persia made them wish to be like him – or at least, have something similar to what he had; Their decision to make the pants motivated their attention to the aesthetic qualities, and their interests seemed to intensify both their experience and reflection about visual experience from the game, and multisensory experience from the textile shop. Motivation was essential for the experience – and the experience was the source of motivation.

A few weeks ago my son (12) was refurnishing his room. He seem to be motivate by responsibility to chose the furniture, textiles, decorations and the color for the walls, and was attentive, careful and proud when he was stitching the pillows and hanging the paintings on the wall. He and his stepbrother (12) were even singing while they were screwing the furniture and painting the walls.

If motivation is essential for learning, education should build upon student’s interests for their world.