Representing Birds, Building Brains

We have an inquiry into birds brewing right now. On Tuesday, we went to the stairwell windows to observe the birds we see in the yard. I thought the children might draw the birds, or write down some words about what they observed, but instead they wanted to count.

Clipboards in hand, they each started making tallies of birds they saw. 

What was really interesting was the way in which the children represented each bird as a tally mark. Maya used bird shapes.

Brynlee made horizontal lines, with the columns divided "so they don't get mixed up".

JJ made very careful dots in a vertical column. He was proud when the tally reached the end of the page.

Eric tallied using numerals, so he "knows how many there are all the time."

Mia also used dots, but she added another element. She represented the houses neighbouring the school as a rectangle made up of dots (each a house). If she saw a bird flying over the houses she made a circle in the rectangle. For birds flying in the school yard or on the ground, she made dots outside of the rectangle. In doing so, she is demonstrating an ability to tally, count, sort, and use spatial reasoning.

This spontaneous activity reveals a lot of thinking and learning. These children are thinking and communicating using representational thought. The ability to represent is foundational to reading, writing, math, and art. To an outsider's eye, these just look like dots on a page. But in fact they are evidence of a major step forward in brain development.