Outside the Lines Child Care

If you are reading this, you are probably here trying to learn more about Outside the Lines and the work we do here. Social media is a powerful tool for giving access to the thinkings of other people. You may be noticing that the last posts on here were from quite a while ago, and you may be wondering why. The answer is simply that I no longer embrace social media. For me, the harm of social media and other attention-maximizing algorithms outweigh the good. Unfortunately, some of the good that I give up with social media is the ability to share our ideas and some of the wonderful moments of our days here at OTL. Please feel free to peruse the posts here that already exist and take a look at our website. If you want to find out more, shoot me an email and we'll talk more!

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Two children were working together to fill a dump truck with mulch. One decided it was time to dump it, and he did so. The other screamed "NOOOOOO!" to make sure his point was taken. They started filling it up again, message received. A third child, playing nearby, wondered if this boundary applied to him too. He dumped out the mulch load, and got the same, passionate, loud response. Satisfied with his experiment, that third child moved on, now a little wiser. The first child thought maybe it was time to dump again, but he had also learned from this experience. "Can I dump it?" "No," answered his colleague, not feeling the need to scream this time. "Okay," said the first child, and they continued to fill until both children agreed it was ready.

Where was I? Right next to them, listening carefully. I knew that the third child was going to dump it, and I could have stopped him. But he needed to find out for himself where the boundary was. They all did. And once everything was laid out on the table and they all understood each other, there was no resentment.

It left me thinking. Sometimes the ways that young children act and communicate are unpalatable to us adults. Screaming makes us squirm and scramble. But for these children, it was simply an extra unit of meaning in their conversation. "THIS IS IMPORTANT TO ME." When children scream to adults, we tend to get ruffled, but children are able to see it for the nuanced tool that it is.

We painted water onto a sun-warm log with fine paintbrushes. When the water touched the wood, it raced away from the brushes by itself, spreading quickly across the surface. Then it shrank back toward the center as it dried.

An unusually strong sunbeam lay across our rug, begging to be harnessed. We used magnet tiles to build colorful shadows.

We picked a bucket of lemons from our tree, and during nap time I sat down with them intending to cut and juice them. When a child saw what I was doing and asked if they could help, I said no without thinking. Then, of course, that child asked why, and I realized that the answer was "because that wasn't my plan". Plans can, and should, change as the people involved do. I explained my whole thought process and changed my answer, and as nap time slowly ended we were joined by several others. We shared an unexpected and lovely hour juicing lemons, daring to sample the sour pulp, and being together.

Using the hot and cold glue guns holds a special magic for all of us. The glue sets so quickly and it makes such lovely little blobs. This particular project began as my own thought that I could offer up my collection of toilet paper cores for painting, and my theory that gluing one end down would make them more satisfying to paint. But of course, as I worked on this, the children supplied their own ideas. They brought sticks and showed me where they could go, then they brought rocks to make the grass. Soon they were bustling back and forth, finding perfect treasures to add. We used markers, glitter makeup, and paint in glue bottles to bring our creation to life. It becomes more marvelous with every passing day.

Four hands of homegrown Dwarf Cavendish bananas, hanging up to ripen! We can't wait to eat them. As with most things, they taste so much better than their store-bought cousins.

After extensive use holding dirt, mulch, and rocks, our class set of dishes was a bit more dirty than the children wanted. They decided to fix this, and asked for soap and water. It was a chilly, grey morning, so the warm soapy water was very inviting. Soon there were many hands plunged in to the elbows, scrubbing the dishes with small towels. Some couldn't resist the call of the water, and put their whole selves onto the wash tubs. The bubbly water was used long after it cooled in various cleaning, cooking, and sensory seeking projects.

We are slowly building our collective knowledge of resources, caring for them, and spending them. The eventual goal is a diverse wealth of art materials freely available, but it takes time and learning to get there. The community has to come to understandings about how to use materials and how to maintain the space. To get there takes experiences.

One step along the way was our very first experience with unlimited glue. Each person was given a whole bottle of glue, carefully labelled with their name, and each person was able to spend that glue however they wanted within the confines of the gluing zone. We also provided containers of resources that could be stuck into the glue, along with a promise that natural resources collected from the yard were also welcome.

Everyone spent their glue differently. Some people dove right in and created huge, glossy lakes of glue, which dripped off the edges and onto the ground. Some took great care to learn about opening and closing their glue bottle before even trying to sq**rt it. Some carried resources away to solitary spots to create small sculptures. Truly, it was amazing to be apart of and all of us felt energized and inspired.

One child held one end of the clear pipe to the spout of the water dispenser. Two more children stood at the other end to wait for the water. They knew from extensive prior research that water comes out of the downhill end of the pipe, so they stretched it out to its full length and stood downhill from their colleague at the dispenser. His heart's desire was to fill endlessly, and a pipe served as the perfect bottomless container for that purpose. The two at the other end of the pipe were seeking to feel the water running over their hands and watch it run over other objects. Their colleague's endless filling provided an ideal opportunity to have that experience.

With our water setup, only one of these goals can be fulfilled at a time. Water comes out the spout in one place, and it can either be used for filling or rinsing. With the ingenious addition of the pipe, both needs were met, along with the added pleasure of collaboration and togetherness. As an adult, I could never have dreamed up a more perfect learning experience for these three, and that is why colleagues in play are so precious.