Encounters with Materials in Early Childhood (Second Edition).

If you plan activities around materials, this book will unsettle your plans in a useful way. It matters for early childhood educators, curriculum designers, and anyone skeptical of outcome-driven craft projects. Instead of asking children to represent an idea with stuff, it shows how to follow the stuff—its weight, wetness, sound, and memory—and let that lead the learning somewhere neither teacher nor child scripted.

1. 1Chapter 1

   Stop teaching about materials. Start thinking with them.

   A framework gets proposed in the opening chapter: think with materials, not about them. The grounding comes from posthumanist and new materialist theories, which treat materials as active participants in children's encounters rather than props. The book leans on Jane Bennett's idea of 'vibrant matter'—things have a vitality and force of their own. The author establishes that educators should attend to what materials do rather than what they mean, shifting from representational logic to performative encounters.

   The idea

   The move from representation to performance changes the educator's job description. Instead of decoding what a child's painting means, you watch what the paint is doing—dripping, cracking, remembering its liquidity. Bennett's vibrant matter gives this philosophical teeth: if things have force of their own, then a classroom is never a human-only event.

   Try this: Pick one material in your room this week and write down only what it did all day—no interpretations, no meanings, just actions.

2. 2Chapter 2

   Paper refuses to lie flat—and the room listens

   In a toddler room, a child named Kai crumples paper again and again. The crinkling sound pulls other children closer, and suddenly the paper's acoustic properties have organized the whole group into a collective listening event. A child tears a long strip of paper and it curls as it falls; the author notes that the paper 'refused to lie flat.' The author quotes Tim Ingold: 'To practice anthropology is to study with people, not to make studies of them,' adapting this to argue that educators should study with materials, not just about them.

   The idea

   Kai's crinkling shows a material doing organizational work no teacher planned: sound gathering bodies into a circle.

   Try this: Hand toddlers paper and stay silent for ten minutes, noting only what the paper does—crinkle, curl, tear—and who moves toward it.

3. 3Chapter 3

   Charcoal breaks, smudges, and refuses to stay on the paper

   Children at a preschool table draw with charcoal. As the sticks break, the smaller pieces produce different marks; the charcoal's fragility becomes a collaborator in mark-making rather than an obstacle. A child named Maya rubs charcoal dust between her fingers and onto the paper, creating a gray smudge; the author describes this as charcoal 'insisting on its powdery nature' and inviting a different kind of drawing. The charcoal dust settles on the table, floor, and children's clothing. The educator initially wants to contain the mess but then notices how the dispersed dust extends the drawing beyond the paper's edges.

   The idea

   Charcoal's weaknesses—brittleness, dust—are its most generative traits. The broken stick widens the mark vocabulary; the powder escapes the page and keeps drawing on the table.

   Try this: Next art session, before wiping anything, photograph the 'mess' and look for what it added that the planned activity didn't.

4. 4Chapter 4

   Paint takes its own path down the easel

   In a kindergarten, children mix tempera paint colors. One child adds too much water, causing the paint to drip down the easel; the dripping paint 'took its own path,' creating vertical lines the child had not intended. A child layers thick globs of paint that crack as they dry over several days; the cracking paint reveals the time and drying process as active forces in the artwork. The author describes paint as 'a fluid that remembers its liquidity even when dried,' noting how paint's material memory challenges the idea of a finished, static product.

   The idea

   Paint embarrasses the notion of a completed artwork. Too much water isn't a mistake but a negotiation with gravity; cracked globs are a record of days passing.

   Try this: Leave one painting out for a full week and revisit it daily with children, tracking what drying, cracking, and fading do to it.

5. 5Chapter 5

   Blocks assert their weight—and a curved block refuses to stack

   A group of children build a tower with wooden unit blocks, and when it collapses, the blocks scatter across the floor. The author frames the collapse not as failure but as the blocks 'asserting their weight and gravity.' A child places a curved block on top of a rectangular one, and it slides off repeatedly; the curved surface 'resisted stacking,' teaching the child about incline and friction through tactile negotiation. The author references Froebel's gifts but argues that blocks exceed their intended pedagogical purpose, becoming 'things that do unexpected work in the classroom.'

   The idea

   A collapsed tower is usually logged as a setback. Here it's the blocks speaking—weight and gravity made visible. The curved block's repeated slide is physics taught by touch, no worksheet required.

   Try this: When a structure falls this week, ask children what the blocks did rather than whether the building failed.

6. 6Chapter 6

   Clay yields and resists in the same gesture

   A preschooler pounds a lump of clay with a fist, and the clay slowly spreads outward. The author writes that the clay 'yielded and resisted in the same gesture,' embodying both receptivity and opposition. Children add water to clay, and it becomes slippery and difficult to shape; one child exclaims, 'It's too slimy!' and the clay's changed consistency redirects the activity from sculpting to sensory exploration. The clay dries out over a weekend and cracks; on Monday, children notice the cracks and begin tracing them with their fingers, turning the cracks into new lines of inquiry rather than defects.

   The idea

   Clay is the book's best argument against thinking of materials as obedient. It gives way and pushes back simultaneously, which is a strange, honest model of relationship.

   Try this: Leave a clay piece unwrapped over a weekend and start Monday by exploring the cracks instead of re-wetting it.

7. 7Chapter 7

   Fabric billows, invites wrapping, and holds the memory of touch

   In a toddler program, a large piece of sheer fabric is suspended from the ceiling. Children run underneath it; the fabric billows and settles, creating a moving canopy that responds to air currents and bodies. A child wraps a strip of velvet around her arm repeatedly; the fabric's softness and stretch 'invited wrapping,' and the child spent twenty minutes engaged in this repetitive, soothing action. The author describes fabric as 'a material that holds the memory of touch,' noting how creases and folds retain traces of previous handlings.

   The idea

   Fabric is the most bodily material in the book. The canopy turns air and movement into architecture; the velvet turns a child's arm into a site of self-regulation.

   Try this: Suspend a sheer fabric panel this week and watch what children invent beneath it before suggesting any use for it.

8. 8Chapter 8

   Water gurgles, pops the boat back up, and crosses into a shirt

   Children pour water from a pitcher into a narrow-necked bottle using a funnel. The water gurgles and backs up when poured too fast, and the sound 'gurgle-gurgle' becomes a shared joke among the children. A child submerges a plastic boat and releases it, watching it pop back to the surface; the author notes that water's buoyancy 'insisted on the boat's return,' demonstrating a material force beyond the child's control. Water spills on the floor and a child lies down in the puddle, feeling the wetness seep through her shirt. The author writes that water 'transgressed the boundary between environment and body.'

   The idea

   Water is the least containable material in the lineup. It jokes, it overrules, it soaks.

   Try this: Set up a pitcher, funnel, and narrow bottle and let the gurgling happen without correcting the pouring technique.

9. 9Chapter 9

   Sand refuses the permanence of a hole

   In an outdoor sand area, children dig a hole that keeps collapsing as the dry sand slides back in. The sand's granular nature 'refused the permanence of a hole,' teaching the children about angle of repose through bodily experience. A child adds water to sand and forms a ball that holds its shape; the author notes that the water acts as a 'binder,' transforming the sand from a collection of separate grains into a moldable substance. The author quotes Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: 'We are all sand,' using this to argue that sand destabilizes the boundary between the human and the nonhuman.

   The idea

   Sand teaches failure as a physical law, not a personal one. The collapsing hole is the angle of repose experienced through arms and knees, which sticks differently than a fact about slopes.

   Try this: Take children to dry sand, have them dig, then add water and dig again—talk only about what changed in the sand.

10. 10Chapter 10

    Light escapes capture every time

    Children use an overhead projector to cast shadows of found objects onto a wall. A translucent plastic cup projects a faint, colored shadow, while an opaque block projects a dark one, and the children sort objects by their shadow qualities. A child moves a prism in a sunbeam, and a rainbow appears on the floor. Another child tries to catch the rainbow with her hands, and the author notes that light 'escaped capture' every time. The author writes that 'light is a material we cannot hold but that holds us,' emphasizing light's paradoxical materiality as something intangible yet deeply affecting.

    The idea

    Light is the book's limit case: a material with no substance you can grab, yet it shapes everything.

    Try this: Set up an overhead projector with a pile of mixed objects and let children sort them by shadow before naming any categories yourself.

Early childhood educators and curriculum designers tired of craft projects with predetermined outcomes. Also valuable for anyone teaching, studying, or writing about posthumanist and new materialist approaches in education.

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