I Made Some Holes!

It was one of those awful rainy days when there was no chance of outside play, even for a short time. I decided to bring the carpentry table inside to provide an outlet for our full room of energised children. It took less than five minutes of loud banging for me to realise that I needed to replace the hammers with some different tools. So got out the drills and glue guns and quickly put the hammers out of reach! I piled a table full of recycled objects next to the carpentry table and let them loose.

I noticed one of the boys (H) drilling holes in different objects; yoghurt containers, a milo tin, plastic lids, a milo box and he even tried a piece of leather. Mustering all of the skills and knowledge I had learned in our Creative Project assessment, I tried to find out if he had any ideas that he would like to express using these materials, to no avail.
I asked him "What are you making?"
He replied quite simply and without looking up "A hole."
Well that put me in my place. According to Loris Malaguzzi (cited Gandini, Etheridge and Hill, 2008) our line of work is to learn and relearn with our children by looking into their learning processes to support them. He believes that one of the ways to do this is to enter into an activity and develop their strategies of thought and action.
I sat beside him and started drilling objects too. I found that their was great stisfaction in working my way through a material until the drill emerged on the other side. It became a challenge to me to find different objects to drill, and finder thicker tougher objects. I began to offer some to H, supporting him by holding some the objects and materials while he drilled and encouraging him when he wanted to give up. I learned that there is great pleasure in exploring the use of tools just to see what they can do. Apart from the obvious physical skills that can be developed using a hand drill (Smorti, 1999), I also discovered that it is actually a very soothing activity. How interesting!
When he had finished I placed all of his drilled objects into a small box to take home. I also asked him if I could take some photos for our create book. This is the folder I used to present my Creative Project, which we have just kept adding to. When mum came to pick him up she looked at the box and asked "What did you make?"
"I made some drills" he replied.
"You used the drill, didn't you?" I gently corrected.
"Oh yeah" he said "And I made some holes."
His pictures are amongst other pictures of children who made planes, a laser gun, a house, a fire extinguisher and a handbag. Revisitng this activity provides lots of social interactions as the children lie on the floor with each other, looking through the photos and talking about the things that they made. By documenting these stories and images children are able to revisit their experiences and share their ideas and learning with each other.

H also appears to have a real sense of belonging to this group of technology users and appears to be proud of his ability to use the drill. He seems to have gained a greater sense of himself as a competent and capable learner as he proudly shares with the other children "I made some holes."
In reading about semiotics (Abramson cited Gandindi, Etheridge & Hill, 2008) I wondered if H was trying to comunicate more than the fact that he had made a hole. Semiotics refers to the use of symbols in communication and Abramson likens it to Malaguzzi's assertion of the hundred languages of children.
I pondered whether these holes that H was so proud of were actually symbols of all of the effort, explorations, understandings and pleasures that he gained in creating them? If they are, then they succintly express everything that I have just written about - amazing!!!!!