ABSTRACT
One summer I assisted in a play scheme for schoolchildren, organized by parents in a village school. One day, one of the scheme's leaders, Betty, brought along her 20-month-old daughter, Louise (not their real names). Betty organized art activities for the children enrolled on the scheme, and decided that Louise too should do something `creative'. Having left Louise standing on the teacher's chair, with me guarding her, she went to cut out coloured foil into many small pieces, and then brought those along with glue and paper over to the desk. Betty carefully explained the sticking procedure to Louise, who paid no attention. Louise was more interested in dipping her ®nger in the jar and tasting the glue. Worrying that it might be toxic, I coaxed her to dip foil pieces instead. Ignoring me, she sombrely ran her fore®nger on the foil pieces. Her mother went to ®nd safer glue. Meanwhile, Louise thoughtfully examined the little black balls that had formed on her ®ngers as the glue dried. Then she tried to remove foil pieces that Betty had glued to the paper, and were now in various stages of bonding. Betty returned with a pot of glue that had to be pressed down onto the paper, and instructed Louise to `bang' it on the paper. The pot was too large for Louise to hold. I dabbed a few spots of glue on the paper, and encouraged her to place foil pieces on those spots. All of a sudden, Louise scooped up as many foil pieces as she could and distributed them all
over the paper in a sweeping motion. She smiled at the brief cloud of colourful pieces, and watched intently as a shower of them descended all the way down to the ¯oor. Her mother promptly abandoned the activity and tidied everything away.
