Learning through Symbols
Four-year-old Faiza loves writing and inventive spelling. She's comfortable with pencils, paper, pictures, and using words to express herself. She'll sit for quite a while just looking at stories and their illustrations, listening and playing with new words, drawing and painting. She is learning a lot by working with symbols and through other two-dimensional activities.

Another four-year-old Munim plays vigorously with blocks, cardboard, tape, and wooden figures, creating worlds of imagination. Using blocks, he designs an entire city for his family, including garages, cars and buses. His whole body is involved in his work - clambering, twisting and balancing - as he narrates his own play: "Here's the cat. Watch out. Get the car in the garage. Quick! Bad guy coming." This is three-dimensional activity. Though an entirely different approach than Faiza’s, Munim's play tells you that he is learning by working with concrete objects, taking in and making up worlds.

In many ways these two children are not so different from one another, as both enjoy learning and expressing themselves creatively.

Both two-dimensional and three-dimensional activities give children opportunities to express themselves creatively. Taqi may need encouragement to write or draw, and his teacher could suggest that he make up stories, poems, songs, or a painting about his worlds. A child who seems to prefer two-dimensional activities can be encouraged to tell her stories using puppets or creative movement.

Leaping in or Taking Things a Step at a Time
Do you have children like Reem in your class? At three, she is filled with curiosity about the world and most things in it. Thrilled with her selection of collage materials -- cotton balls, glue and pencil sharpenings she is totally absorbed in her art project. Her simultaneous approach to learning is much like the swimmer who jumps right into the pool rather than testing the water or deciding to use the steps. Often risk takers, children involved in a simultaneous approach to learning forge ahead and are sometimes as surprised as they are delighted with their creations.

Fawad, another child in Reem's class, approaches learning in a different way. Making a collage sounds like lots of fun, but rather than jump right in, he looks at the available choices, collects what he thinks he'll need, and may even line up his materials before he begins. Since he's taking a sequential approach to this particular task, Fawad may already have an idea of just what he wants to do with the materials or how he wants the end result to look. When things seem organized and perhaps tested out a bit, he works fairly methodically. However, it is important to remember that this tidy style doesn't mean that he lacks creativity or imagination.

Whether a child chooses to approach learning simultaneously or sequentially can be affected not only by that child's attitude toward life but also, and more simply, by the mood of the day, the particular circumstances or materials, or even a whim. Both approaches offer children interesting insights and opportunities to learn. Activities where children can express themselves in these ways need to be readily available in early childhood settings. If a child seems to be reluctant to veer from a sequential approach, a few suggestions or open-ended questions may do the trick: "Fawad, what do you think will happen if we take a few of these colors and just mix them up? Let's find out. We can always go back and do it another way later." Offering safe ways to try new methods, such as helping children see that planning doesn't have to inhibit creativity or that discovery can be just as fulfilling as a specific result, can broaden children's involvement in learning.