Play and Inspiration: SEEC Part 1

Kristin Reiber Harris

Last week I spent two days at the Smithsonian Castle immersed in exploring play, preschool children and museums. The event was the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center's Play: Engaging Young Learners in Object Rich Environments seminar. The pilot event was attended by 24 educators from both preschools and museums, primarily from the Washington, D.C. area. I arrived with great enthusiasm to both present information about my app development for preschool kids with museum assets and be inspired by other educators working in both museums and early education centers. I was not disappointed.

Smithsonian Castle  Photo:KH

SEEC has been around since 1988, but I only learned about it this year. I have been a frequent visitor to Smithsonian museums my entire life. It was my current involvement as an app developer with museum assets that put SEEC on my radar. A very fortuitous discovery for me. I contacted Betsy Bower, Director, Center for Innovation in Early Learning, SEEC as soon as I learned about them. I wanted to introduce myself and invited her to download the apps I am developing. Thus began the dialogue that brought me to Washington for this event. 


SEEC was founded by the Smithsonian to create a museum-based educational system that would serve as a national model. It was designed to be a mixture of theory and practice using museum resources and museum practice with early childhood education. SEEC is now providing educational consulting to K-12 museum magnet schools, educational programs focused on arts integration, early childhood programs and museums. There are 130 children in the program from 3 months to six years old in three centers located in Smithsonian museums.

We were greeted by Betsy Bower on Thursday morning. Our first task was to go downstairs to a small collection in the West Wing Commons of the Castle and find an object that we could reference in introducing ourselves to the group. I walked into the room and saw this snow leopard hanging on the wall. Perhaps I was influenced by Imperial Woman (Pearl Buck), a novel about the life of the last empresses of China that I was listening to in the car on the way up. I was immediately drawn to this snow leopard. It is emphatically regal.

Snow leopard in the West Wing Commons, Smithsonian Castle  Photo: Quadell/Wikipedia

However, I decided to use a wonderful pair of Nigerian narrative sculpture hanging beside the snow leopard to introduce myself because of my interest in storytelling. Unfortunately I did not have information about the objects. I know where they are and will find them again. This exercise made it clear that this was to be a very interactive event. No sitting quietly in the corner absorbing information. Like many ice breakers, it was a good way to learn a little bit about my fellow attendees, ie who selected the silver teapot, the football helmet or the peacock and why.

Discussion/definitions of play started our longer conversation. As we suggested aspects of play we built this list; fun, free thought, independence, connections, cooperation, risks among many others. Along these lines we would build a continuum of play from child initiated to teacher directed over the course of the next two days.
 

Our second task was to go to the Peacock Room in the Freer Gallery and come up with a lesson plan for a preschool class. It was these kinds of activities that I found the very most rewarding in terms of new ways of thinking. If you are not familiar with the Peacock Room, it is an elaborately ornate room originally built in London in the late 19th century that was eventually moved to the Detroit home of gallery founder Charles Lang Freer and filled with his collection of pots from Egypt, Irn, Japan, China and Korea. The room was moved to the Freer Gallery and recently restored based on photographs taken at Freer's residence in 1908.

Peacock Room, Freer Gallery  Photo:Freer Gallery Common License Attribution

To complete our "assignment" we were divided into groups of three, my partners were Marnie, a preschool teacher and Adrienne, a museum educator. This room was designed to display a collection of ceramics and we took our cue from the numerous plates, bowls and vessels on the wall. We had fun devising an activity that involved the kids creating a dinner party, selecting the bowl and "cup" they wanted to use during the party. Next they would draw placemats illustrating their choices. Of course what was to follow was the party.

Fascinating idea to me to walk into an incredibly complex, rich environment such as the Peacock Room and see it through the eyes of a preschool child. I find the space a bit overwhelming, beautiful but overwhelming. How can we help them make this room their own? What are the points of entry? The glorious peacocks were another aspect of the room educators suggested to engage the children among others.

Watch for more about the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center's Play: Engaging Young Learners in Object Rich Environments seminar. This is the first of numerous posts about this stimulating experience.