Think of 'Steptoe and Son's' yard and it could describe the state of my back garden at the moment. If you were brave enough to venture out there you would find old timbers with rusty nails, a bathtub, bits of tiles, pipes, bricks, and goodness knows what else. And while my partner is probably cringing at the thought of my DIY enthusiasm on renovating the bathroom, my children, and half the neighbourhood's children, are in their element making things from all the junk.
For the past few weeks they have been making go-karts and other rickety vehicles, but when they came home from school the other day and discovered a bathtub in the garden their play adopted a sailing and Robinson Crusoe theme. What is evident within these play themes is that children bring objects together as they play, creating new usage as a result of the combination - what is theoretically known as combinatorial flexibility.
EXTENSION ACTIVITIES
Let's look at a simple example before exploring its importance within play as a whole.
Imagine for a moment a child playing with some rope. By itself the length of rope has limited uses - the child can tie someone up with it, skip with it, pretend it's a sea snake, or use it on the ground to represent a boundary - all pretty basic stuff.
Now imagine the child ties one end to a gatepost and hands the other end to an adult, and asks the adult to whip it about so the child can skip over it. The child has now combined the rope with a gatepost and an adult so as to use the rope in a new way. Still not amazing but more than it was before.
Imagine again that the child now ties the loose end of the rope to another gatepost, pulling it taut, then finds a blanket and drapes it over the rope to form a tent. Therefore, the child has combined the rope with two gateposts and a blanket to create a new and extended use of the original rope. This is combinatorial flexibility. The new combination (how objects are used together) in a flexible way can afford children endless opportunities and uses for all sorts of objects.
The ability to combine objects to create something new and different from their original design is perhaps a function we humans mastered some way back in our evolution. It is perhaps also one that sets us apart from most other species.
It is this experimentation with objects found in our natural habitat that has eventually enabled us to construct the most elaborate structures and architectural designs. Much of this ability develops in children's manipulation, fascination, combination and experimentation with everyday objects.
It's hardly surprising that toy manufacturers produce elaborate construction products like Lego, or that schools set aside a specific 'construction' area for this type of play. They are simply maximising what is already a natural curiosity in children.
BRINGING TOGETHER
Combinatorial flexibility is not separate from compound flexibility or neophilia (see recommended reading). Compound flexibility is the flexibility in a child's world that will enable the child to develop as a flexible person who is able to adapt to changes with little problem or conflict. Neophilia is about the innate curiosity we have for all things rare, new and unusual. Bring all these aspects together and you can see that they actually complement each other. We could even bring in the idea of 'loose parts', because without them children may not have enough variation in the objects they play with to enable them to make all manner of combinations.
Combinatorial flexibility is not just about children's play with objects.
It can also involve combinations of symbols such as words (think of children making up comical or nonsensical rhymes or stories), or pencil lines on a sheet of paper which when combined make up a meaningful picture.
Moreover, it is also about mental constructs and abstract notions, and how when these are combined they create new, perhaps even novel constructions or abstractions. However, it should not be confused with problem-solving processes, as play is about the 'I process of assembling all the components, and not the end product or goal' (Sylva 1977).
Hughes (2001) explains this clearly and suggests that combinatorial flexibility is about 'scanning one's memory bank for tiny pieces of information that have been learnt, to see if any of those pieces, or if any combination of those pieces, might contribute to a solution of a problem'.
Therefore, even when we observe children's manifested behaviour, particularly object play, we know that beneath the surface the child is actually making internal combinations as much as she or he is making external concrete combinations.
LASTING EFFECTS
What is interesting about the idea of combinatorial flexibility - especially as many of you probably provide opportunities for children to play - is that children do not require prompting or coercion by an adult.
If adults continually define the uses of certain objects (like instructing children to use only one end of a paintbrush), or supplying limited material required as a result of a curriculum-based goal, the disablement to their curiosity, exploratory and creative nature will have long lasting effects well into adulthood.
Combinatorial flexibility is a process that occurs anywhere a child chooses to play, it is not defined by space, object or adult agenda, although certain combinations can be extended as a result of adult intuition, rather than overt adult intervention. For example, some combinations within indoor spaces have the potential to cause serious damage, as some children I worked with found out when they tied a rope to a tyre that was mounted on wheels and spun their friends around at great speed. Damage to a nearby table and a few onlookers wasn't well received. Similarly, when young people swear at each other, this would not be appropriate with other children around, but is nevertheless a common aspect of their cultural and social language development.
For the most part, the playworker can only facilitate children's combinatorial flexibility by providing the space and objects for such a process to develop (think of my back garden full of timber, tiles and a bathtub). More than this, however, they can give permission for certain combinations to take place. This involves thinking about how children create mental constructs based on existing information they have learnt, and also how they can experiment with abstract notions - even those that challenge socio-cultural values and beliefs.
Philip Waters is a freelance trainer and playwork consultant, based in Cornwall
Further reading
* Hughes, B (2001) Evolutionary Playwork and Reflective Analytic Practice. London: Routledge.
* Sylva, K (1977) Play and learning, in B Tizard and D Harvey (eds.) Biology of Play. London: Heinemann.
* Waters, P (2005) Novelty factor: neophilia. Nursery World: Out of School, pp 8-9, May.
* Waters, P (2005) Free range: compound flexibility. Nursery World: Out of School, pp 8-9, January.
