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One Morning, Many Languages
Rebecca Fox Stoddard
July 2019
Children shape nests, worms, and houses in clay after noticing a bird outside the window, weaving gestures of shelter and care across material and moment.
The morning began quietly as children arrived in ones and twos, bringing with them the last pieces of home still clinging to their voices and their bodies. Coats were shrugged off, boots dragged across the floor, greetings exchanged in half-whispers. Slowly the room began to settle into its rhythm. In the block corner a few children bent over their towers, adding piece after piece until the structures leaned too far and crashed back into piles, the collapse greeted with laughter and immediate rebuilding.
Across the way, others leaned into books, their lips moving silently as they followed familiar lines, not reading aloud but holding the words close, tracing them in rhythm with their breath.
In the studio the atmosphere was different, almost expectant. On the table blocks of clay had been placed, cool and heavy under the morning light. They sat without instructions, their presence alone enough to suggest invitation. The first children who entered stood back, circling slowly, brushing fingertips across the surface before pulling away, uncertain whether to commit.
It took only one decisive movement—a palm pressed firmly down into the weight of clay, a thumb sunk deep into its surface—for the hesitation to break. Others joined almost immediately. Soon the quiet was filled with the sound of pressing and pulling, with coils rolled beneath small hands and lumps stacked, tipped over, and pressed back together. A conversation had begun between children and material, and it carried its own steady hum.
What happens when a material waits without explanation, carrying its own presence, its own quiet invitation?
A Bird at the Window
It was at this point that a sudden flutter drew every head toward the window. A bird had landed lightly on the table collecting a pine needle and holding it firmly in its beak. Its body tipped forward, wings flickered for balance, then it was gone again in a single motion.
“Look!” one child shouted, pressing her hand against the glass.
The moment was brief, but it shifted the work in the room. When the children turned back to the clay, their movements were different. Thumbs pressed with more insistence. Palms cupped more deliberately. Hollows began to form with the suggestion of nests. What had been simply pressing and rolling moments earlier now carried a new sense of intention, as though the bird had left behind its task and the children had picked it up.
Hollows Becoming Nests
“It’s the nest,” whispered one boy, holding his hollow close, as though it might already contain something.
Across the table a girl pressed her coils one atop the other, pausing between each layer to push them into place. “Eggs go here,” she said, circling her finger along the rim. Another child, less patient, drove her fist down hard into the clay again and again, each strike deepening the cavity in front of her. At the far end, the youngest leaned her whole torso across the mound, pressing her chest and arms into its surface until her weight left its impression.
Clay gave way under the force of their bodies, sometimes slumping, sometimes cracking, always able to be repaired. Bowls collapsed sideways and were lifted again, rims broke and were smoothed, laughter accompanied the failure and quickly gave way to another attempt. There was no sense of stopping—collapse was absorbed into the rhythm of work, persistence stitched into every gesture.
Do we let collapse and repair remain visible in our classrooms, or do we erase it too quickly, leaving only the illusion of success?
The Clay’s Reply
Clay speaks in a slower register than most materials. Sticks can splinter. Pine needles spring back. But clay does not answer with quick reactions. It slumps, it holds, and above all, it remembers. Every press, every hollow, every crack carries its history forward, leaving children to work with not only the present form but also the traces of what came before.
“The rain will come,” murmured one girl as she traced her fingers around the edge of her bowl, smoothing the rim once more. Her words carried with them not only her imagination but also the weight of the clay itself, as if its density required her to consider weather, collapse, and protection all at once.
The material slowed the children down. They pressed again, returned to earlier failures, re-formed shapes with slight adjustments. The record of earlier attempts was not wiped clean; it lived on, carried in the cracks and thickened walls, teaching through its persistence.
Which materials in our environments carry memory like this, demanding that children stay long enough to learn persistence?
The Bird Returns
A cry interrupted the steady work. “He’s back!”
The bird had returned, hopping along the railing, dipping its beak into a shallow puddle. Children pressed forward to the glass.
“He’s thirsty,” one said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“He needs worms,” another added, turning quickly back toward the table.
“He’s making a nest,” a third concluded, watching the bird with narrowed eyes.
Hands still streaked with clay pressed against the glass. For a moment, the classroom and the outside world seemed joined by the same intention—gathering, shaping, preparing for something not yet visible.
Worms for the Nest
The next shift happened almost unnoticed. A girl began rolling, moving her palms back and forth until a long thin strand appeared. She placed it carefully beside her hollow. “Worms,” she explained, looking up just long enough to be sure the others had heard.
The rhythm spread quickly. Soon worms covered the table—some thick, some narrow, some curling back onto themselves, many breaking and being rolled again. The work was steady and repetitive, but never without purpose.
“This one’s too big,” muttered a boy, holding his strand up for inspection. “The bird won’t eat it.”
“These are for the babies,” said another, arranging hers in a neat row.
Nests were now more than shelters. They carried provision, care offered in the form of food.
The sound of palms rubbing clay filled the room. The repetition grew calming, the rhythm so steady it shaped even the adults. I noticed my own breathing had slowed to match theirs.
Do we value repetition as deepening, or do we dismiss it as simply repeating the same thing again?
Houses, Burrows, Bodies
Not every child stayed with nests. Some flattened slabs into corners, stacking them carefully into rising walls. “This is the house,” one declared, smoothing the edges. Another dug her fingers deep into lumps, pushing until tunnels connected into passageways. “Burrow,” she announced proudly. The youngest leaned her chest once more against the mound, leaving the shape of her body across the clay.
Clay carried all of it. Some walls toppled, others held. Burrows collapsed, then were dug again. The forms varied, but the impulse was shared: to create places that could hold, protect, and keep.
Clay Holding Us Too
By this time the table was crowded with forms—nests with worms curled beside them, houses with leaning walls, burrows running deep, bodies imprinted across surfaces. In the midst of it all the children’s words carried the meaning forward.
“My nest is for three eggs.”
“This worm is for the baby.”
“The rain will come.”
These phrases marked the work like punctuation, scattered evenly but carrying weight.
I found myself slowing as well. The rhythm of rolling, the laughter after collapse, the determination of pressing and re-pressing—it asked something of me too. Clay had become a teacher not only for the children but for the adults who shared the room, pressing us all into a pace that required patience and attention.
What might change if we allowed materials to set the tempo, rather than always guiding children toward ours?
Wonderings
By the end of the morning the table held nests, worms, houses, and burrows. Some slumped, others leaned, all carried the traces of persistence.
The bird gathered pine needles. The children pressed clay. Neither act was finished.
And we wondered:
- When the bird returns with another pine needle, what new shapes will the children press into clay?
- Will worms still be rolled, or will new foods appear?
- How might today’s traces remain when small hands return tomorrow?
Core Teaching Pieces & Possibilities
Looking back, clay offered more than nests and worms, more than houses and burrows. It acted as a teacher itself, shaping persistence, calling forth patience, asking us to reconsider how learning unfolds. These threads are not conclusions but openings—reminders for us to hold onto, provisional like the clay itself.
Materials teach through resistance.
Clay sagged, cracked, forgave. Children pressed again, smoothed again, re-formed what had fallen apart. Collapse became an invitation to start over.
- Provocation: Offer other resistant materials—wire that bends, sticks that snap, sand that slips. Watch how children adapt.
- Support: Resist fixing too quickly. Sit with collapse, give time for children to try again.
Repetition carries depth.
Worm after worm rolled across the table. Each strand was practice, each one provision. Repetition was not waste but knowledge rehearsed in the body.
- Provocation: Place rolling pins, dowels, ropes beside clay. Ask, “What else can be rolled or stretched?”
- Support: Protect long spans of uninterrupted time so repetition can deepen instead of being cut short.
Environment as co-teacher.
The bird at the window changed everything. Its pine needle became part of the children’s coils, its thirst mirrored in their worms.
- Provocation: Place pine needles, feathers, or grasses beside the clay. Watch if children fold them into their building.
- Support: Keep classrooms porous—windows open, tables near gardens, places where the world outside can enter.
Children speak in many languages.
“Eggs go here.” “This worm is for the baby.” Words were fragments, but the dialogue was larger—fists pressing, torsos leaning, palms smoothing.
- Provocation: Invite children to revisit nests through drawing, loose parts, or shadow.
- Support: Document gestures with the same care as words—photograph a fist pressing, note a torso leaning—so body language is seen as language.
Educators are learners too.
My breath slowed with the rhythm of worm-rolling. Clay shaped me as much as the children.
- Provocation: Try the material alongside them. Roll worms, hollow bowls. Let them see you persist too.
- Support: Build reflective pauses into your day—write a note, take a photo, share with colleagues. Let clay be your teacher as well.
These pieces are not tidy lessons. They are threads to carry forward—reminders that materials carry wisdom, that repetition has value, that the world outside belongs inside, that children speak in many ways, and that educators learn alongside. They remain provisional, unfinished, waiting to be revisited, like the clay itself.
Glossary of Traces and Wonderings
- Trace – the mark that lingers, evidence of gesture. What traces will remain when the clay is gone?
- Revisitation – returning again and again, never the same. Do our days leave space for return?
- Resistance – the pushback of clay, shaping persistence.
- Enclosure – hollowing, circling, making inside and outside.
- Trajectory – rolling back and forth, rhythm rehearsed into knowing.
- Interval – the pause between gestures, where attention gathers.
- Emergence – meaning forming provisionally, not fixed.
- Co-construction – making meaning together—with peers, adults, materials.
- Poetics of Space – the nest, the house, the burrow as images of dwelling.
- Holding Environment – clay as safe ground, forgiving collapse.
- Dialogue with Materials – the hand presses, the clay answers back.
- Ambiguity – openness left visible, meaning unfinished. Can we let it stay?
- Nourishment – worms rolled beside nests, food imagined into being.
- Dwelling – gestures of shelter, of belonging.
- Wondering – What holds us? Where is home? What keeps us safe when the wind comes?
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