expansion vs. contraction

As I've mentioned in recent posts, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the way my kids play, in regards to how their various playing affects them physically and mentally, and how that all relates to what I've learned from my Enki Kindergarten curriculum materials. One of the things I've particularly been looking at is what activities cause expansion of my kids into the world around them, and which cause contraction into themselves. Both are important aspects of learning. Learning something new causes you to contract while you study it, figure it out, and come to understand it. But once you've experienced it, that knowledge causes a feeling of expansion into the world around you. A healthy balance is the key to well being -- too much of either, especially contraction in a young child, causes dys-integration.

The first photo is an example of an activity where my kids feel expanded -- running and playing on the beach at the lake.

This photo is an example of contraction. Zoo Boy finds and explores a pine cone on the beach. He brought the pine cone over to me when he found it, asked a couple questions about it (which I answered with a simple "hm..." or "I wonder" -- my open-ended answers were not meant to discourage the contraction, but rather were designed not to draw him further into an analytical study of the pinecone, but to allow him to experience it simply as it is). He spent quite a few minutes playing with the scales, seeing how they fit together and are held onto the cone. Then he ran to get another pine cone to compare, and disovered that they are put together the same way. He then ran off to show it to J, and they both explored it for a bit before they returned to more expansive play.

Another example of contraction, and an example of how too much contraction is not a good thing. Here J is working on a lego set that is a much-coveted prize (i.e. bribe) for having finally potty-trained. (HOORAY!) The set is large and has taken him days to complete. I've been watching to make sure that he takes regular breaks for more active and expansive play over the past several days, and everything has remained fairly well in balance. That is, until today. I had to work away from home this morning, and when I got home around noon, I discovered that he'd been working on it most of the morning while The Map Man took care of stuff that needed his attention. Within moments of getting home, I noticed that J was getting upset over little things, fairly unlike him these days, and once I realized the problem -- too much contraction! -- I quickly worked to remedy the situation. I put on some music and coerced him into dancing around with me and Zoo Boy (he at first didn't want to leave the project, but eventually did and had a great time dancing). For a half hour we moved our bodies and jumped and spun and worked on reintegrating, then we fed the kids lunch and sent them outdoors for some expansive play. After feeling integrated again, J was able to return to his project at tolerate small frustrations as he worked on it.

And here are the kids, expanding and feeling great.

Don't mistake me on this, I really doubt I'm going to spend the rest of my days analyzing whether my kids' play is expansive or contracted. I don't think there's any need for that -- the rhythm just feels right to keep the two balanced. This will be the key for setting up our homeschooling day -- naturally keeping the balance between expansion and contraction, and tweaking things here and there if there's too much or too little of each. But I really like understanding the concepts and being able to recognize each, as it will help me decide how much of each to build into our days, which will keep me from overwhleming the kids with too much contraction and not enough expansion during our school year.