“This is a room inside the castle. When you look out of the window, you can see the lake and the mountains.” – Age 4
Sometimes we make assumptions about what children can or can’t do.
I’ll always remember a particular moment when a four-year-old surprised me with his thinking. I’d asked some children to group a selection of postcards. I was interested to know what groups they would form, how they would label each group, and what their reasoning would be.
When I looked at their groups of postcards, it was fairly easy to understand most children’s reasoning. For example, their groups were ‘Houses’, ‘Flowers and trees’, and so on.
But one child had grouped his cards in a way that confused me (see photo). My first reaction was that he mustn’t have understood the task. Why had he grouped three seemingly unrelated cards? His three cards showed a grand room, a coastline, and a mountain scene with a castle.
I asked him Why do these cards go together? I was stunned by his eloquent response: This is a room inside the castle. When you look out of the window, you can see the lake and the mountains.
It was an important reminder to really listen and try to understand a child’s thinking, rather than assume they haven’t succeeded.
