Walk the plank

At our last play date on our playground this summer, a group of children, including a couple of older siblings, decided to play pirate. They decided they needed a plank to walk, so they unearthed a fence board from the pile of leftover construction materials. Here's where the learning really began! How to get the plank to be strong enough to hold someone without falling? First, they found two other pieces of wood and lid them in an "x" across one end. Here's where I stepped in to help them figure it out without anyone getting injured. First, we raised our hands to see how many kids thought these two boards would be enough to hold the plank? Then we counted to three, and I pushed down on the end of the plank. Nope! Not strong enough! We need more wood. The children worked together to add more wood pieces, testing their progress as they went along. One little boy added a small piece of cement with rocks embedded in it because he knew it was strong.

After a while the 8 year old big sister held a large piece of wood up under the plank on the drop off side. She had determined that if they stacked wood under the plank it would hold someone better. At this point I left a parent in charge, and missed whether they worked from the plank down, or the ground up.

Just think of what ideas the children were working on during this process: physics, math, cooperation, engineering, and more. It would have been very easy for one of us adults to come in and explain the process to them, thereby shortening it, and also taking away the opportunity for them to learn it themselves. It was very tempting for many of us adults to stop this experiment because of the fear of it not being safe. That element of risk and discovery was what kept the group if 6 or so children at it for almost half an hour. 

How often do we "smart," experienced adults interrupt some kind of magical learning with issues of safety? Sure the board might have tipped, and a child might have fallen the two feet to the ground. Sure a child could have hurt themselves carrying a heavy piece of wood, or bumped another child maneuvering a long board (and this did happen). But if we step in and stop this kind of discovery, or insert our adult experience and logic into their learning, we take away so much from them.