Underneath the tires, I assume there has to be dirt, and rocks. But if ever I've seen a version of the needle in the haystack with my own eyes, it's a rock in the playground. Try finding rocks in something that looks like this:
But here's the thing: one kid in my afternoon group decided he was going to look for rocks. He took a bucket and got to work, and before long, he'd found a rock. And then another one. And another, and on until when it was time to go home, he had too many rocks to carry in his hands. I had to give him a Ziploc to put them in. I poured his new rock collection into the bag, thinking that was the end of it.
Silly thought, that.
The next day, half the class was scouring the playground for rocks. And they all found enough rocks to fill their hands and beyond. And even today, a week or two later, I put four rocks in a child's mailbox that she'd asked me to hold on to for her while she played elsewhere on the playground. Chances are, they'll find rocks until the end of the year.
Why does this matter?
Simply because if I had asked the children, or told the children, to look for rocks, they probably wouldn't have done it. Or, maybe a little bit, but not the handfuls of rocks they've uncovered, and not for the length of time they've spent searching. Looking for stones half the size of a golf ball amid thousands and thousands of little black rubber pieces half the size of a golf ball... well, it takes patience, and persistence, and a desire to find what you're looking for. It's not something you do unless you're interested in doing it.
And isn't that how we operate in life? Don't we perform better, feel better, interact with others better, remember better, when we're interested in whatever's going on? Interest fuels learning, and when we take away the balance of things that children learn "because they should/need to" and things they learn because they want to, we destroy entire worlds of possibility.
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