publication LEARNING SOFTLY

LEARNING SOFTLY / ATELIER 2025

THE FLUFF MUSEUM

We love fluff! Some people think FLUFF is boring but it’s actually very, very interesting and you can think about it and search for it for a LONG time...

Wells, age 6

1 / BEGINNING As part of an investigation into THE UNKNOWN, Muireann, Iskra and Yulia explore some strange new flowers in the Atelier.

Muireann divides her attention between what is directly in front of her and what she can discover by scanning the room.

She spots an older collection in the cabinet, and asks to see the furry pussy-willow. Muireann runs to her back-pack and returns with four of the same soft buds, which she calls ‘fluffs’.

A conversation begins between us all: How can a plant be furry like an animal? What are fluffs actually made of? Why do we love them so much?

LEARNING SOFTLY means we can welcome the ‘fluffs’ into our research as a valuable addition to the other unusual plants and try to find out more.

I think in fluff is seeds.

Muireann

I think there is fluff in the fluff.

Iskra

The Atelier is a workshop for WAYS OF KNOWING and so we begin to explore using multiple strategies: looking, touching, viewing through a microscope, arranging on the overhead projector to make shadows, opening and examining the inside. At the end of the session, Muireann tucks her own fluffs safely in her pocket.

LEARNING SOFTLY means acknowledging emotional attachment as much as intellectual curiosity. I give a fluff to each of the children to carry with them as they leave, to continue their thinking and keep them company.

complex ideas in ‘soft’ interactions: coincidence, fascination, softness, collecting, cuteness, love,

unusualness, charm

2 / A SOFT SURPRISE Over the weekend one of the larger seed pods bursts open, releasing its bright white fluff. It emerges in curls and expands like candy-floss. With the tiny black seeds removed the fluffs float in mid-air, tracing pathways around the room.

They feel like strange new friends - fascinating, playful and unpredictable.

Many children are captivated by the literal softness of the seeds and by the soft ways they behave; floating, pausing, moving, resting. They seem to awaken a fascination with what we can and can not control. Will they land on our hands? will they float away? where are they going? why?

Younger children also visit the Atelier and discover the new floating seeds. They experiment many times, launching, chasing, catching them. They think in silence, absorbed in motion, then start to find words:

Every time we notice new things. That we can blow it. That it goes to the ceiling. That they go way too high! Because the pressure in the air makes it go higher...

Emmett (age 5)

Why does it come down again? I blowed one and it broke. How do they go up to the sky?

Daniel (age 5)

The more harder you blow, it goes more higher. And if you keep blowing, it reaches the ceiling. Outside it’s soooooo windy and the air is so fast. It just zoomed!

Emmett

Complex ideas in ‘soft’ interactions: movement, air pressure, dynamics, causes, consequences,

proportionality, rules, exceptions, height, control, freedom, escape, mystery

The floating seed heads literally change the way the children move. They adapt their gestures and slow down their speed. As their bodies move in newly graceful ways, their thinking moves too. They observe out loud, ask questions, propose explanations, notice exceptions.

LEARNING SOFTLY means that movement, flow, silent thinking, experimenting, wondering, conversing are all recognised as equally significant ways to research.

Zev is less interested in catching the fluffy seeds than in the freedom of flight. He comes outside to launch seed after seed, following them with his eyes and body, and standing for a long time to watch as they fly right over the school and disappear.

LEARNING SOFTLY means welcoming these moments when our curiosity is taken to the edge of observable experience. It also means valuing and leaving uninterrupted the quiet, still moments in which Zev stands watching, even after the fluff has disappeared.

4 / LOCATING, COLLECTING, CARING

At certain points in our research, ideas can deepen and evolve by being gathered together in a physical location.

I propose the model apartment to Wells and her friends and the idea immediately makes sense. They arrange the soft collection inside, clear space for drawing and viewing the pieces, and name the whole installation ‘The Fluff Museum’.

I am drawing them softly, and if you feel my drawing with your finger it’s actually fluffy! Wells

As the children work, it is clear that SOFTNESS is not just a texture. It is also a way of noticing, of moving the hands, of making aesthetic arrangements in physical space. Considering SOFTNESS this way it is synonymous with care and reminds me of Vea Vecchi’s description of aesthetics in the context of Reggio Emilia:

‘...an attitude of empathy towards things around us...an attitude of care and attention towards things...the opposite of indifference...’

Is Beauty a Way of Knowing? in The Hundred Languages of Children

The life of an idea has to be cared for too. I move the Museum to a larger space as it grows and extend the gallery with new collection platforms and more paper for drawing. Many children are now involved and we need space for their contributions and insights. The Museum generates questions, answers, puzzles, stories. Our jobs are often unusual and funny - how to test for fluffiness? how to stop our exhibits floating away? Wells, Muireann and Iskra decide we need help:

Bob (the octopus-alien) can be the ticket man.

I’ll make a goose. Who can the goose be?

The one that checks if the ticket is ok.

The dinosaurs are the ‘checker-outs’ - they answer questions and look for robbers.

The bee is the guide.

This is also like a bee, it can be the care-taker of the whole museum.

Wells, Muireann, Iskra

The Fluff Museum enacts SOFTNESS by being many things simultaneously: / a location for our collection / a stage for story-making / a structure which needs daily care / a provocation for touching and questioning / a way of describing the world / a reassuring presence / a focus for ongoing research / a collection of knowledge / a space for beauty Each of these is a distinct part of its identity but also has soft boundaries. There are multiple ways to engage with the Museum, different in kind but equal in value.

5 / MORE SPACE FOR SOFTNESS

What began with four pussy-willow buds held in Muireann’s hand, has grown into indepth research. Co-constructing projects with children means changing our thinking as teachers too and I begin to consider how SOFTNESS is / could be present in other aspects of the Atelier. For several years we have been exploring ‘how to feel at home at school’ and SOFTNESS - literal and metaphorical - seems to be an important new emphasis.

In a much larger project in Reggio Emilia, architects, educators, children and support workers researched the question: ‘What kind of place for living well in school?’. Their findings are documented in the book ‘Children, Spaces, Relations - Metaproject for an Environment for Young Children’. ‘Overall softness’ is one of the ‘Keywords’ that emerges to describe not just the soft architecture of light, colour, sound and atmosphere, but a way of being and building knowledge in school:

‘It is possible to design spaces alternatively from the traditional ways: spaces that are softer, less rigid, more open to the indeterminableness of experience... ...a context of overall softness means an ecosystem that is diversified, stimulating, and welcoming, where each inhabitant is part of a group but also has spaces for privacy and a pause from general rhythms.’

Children, Spaces, Relations (Reggio Children / Domus Academy Research Centre)

(right) searching for fluff: a way to be lead into the landscape softly, a ‘pause from general rhythms’... (below) exploring ‘indeterminableness’: soft focus photography, getting lost in the detail of the microscope’s images; following a bee’s unpredictible flight on paper...

LIGHT BOXES:fine sand, or oil, paper, brushes, sticks aspects of SOFTNESS: changeability, glow, transformation; stories that come and go; marks that appear, change, disappear; children becoming absorbed, reflective; slow, smooth

MAP of SOFTNESS / ATELIER

THE SEWING TABLE: frames, needles, thread, textiles, fluff aspects of SOFTNESS: touch, comfort, company, rhythm, cuteness, collaboration, contentment, celebration

JUNE 2025

STICK INSECT FOREST: sticks, plasticine, diamonds, supports, insects aspects of SOFTNESS: delicateness, balance, sclupting, holding, touching, connecting, empathy, design

THE PAPER MONSTER: air space, paper straws, tape, pens, paper aspects of SOFTNESS: lightness, suspension, movement, dancing, delicateness, freeform, relationship, love, inhabiting, belonging

THE DOORWAY - shelves, cushions, paper, pens aspects of SOFTNESS: re-shaping, inhabiting, playing, laughing, children gathering things they love, developing sense of place, settling

CONSTRUCTION: magna-tiles, spotlights, animals, diamonds aspects of SOFTNESS: glow, shape, transformation, atmosphere, place-making, settling, contentment

THE FLUFF MUSEUM: large table, appartment model, collection, gallery, film screen Aspects of SOFTNESS: fluffiness, invitations to touch, care, beauty, illustration, slow time, cuteness, charm, amazement, place-making, collecting, belonging, daily work, rhythm and routine

STOP-MOTION FILM-MAKING: fluff, animals, diamonds, ipad, lighting aspects of SOFTNESS: stories that come and go, experiments with effects, soft materials, fluff as a character, imagination, invention, rhythm, gradualness

6 / FLUFF DAY

Although we have been studying SOFTNESS for many weeks it can still take us by surprise. On a day when the sun, willow trees and wind work together, fluff falls from the sky like snow, covering the grass, racing in flurries across the playground.

In the classroom next to the Atelier the teacher, Nellie, calls the children to come and see. LEARNING SOFTLY means our projects cross spaces and Nellie knows this is not a moment to be missed. I go out into the playground to record videos and we use these back in the classroom to provoke theory-building, writing and visual explanations.

The sun has a lot of energy and it’s carrying the fluff in the air. And the sun gets lesser energy and it drops the fluff and the fluff flies down to the ground. When the sun gets more energy, the fluffs go up. It’s like up, down, up, down...

Yulia

If the air is there then it can fly, but if there’s no air it can only just drop down.

Thomas

Wherever the air goes the fluff will go, because the wind is blowing the fluff and wants it to go from one place to another.

Caleb

The fluff falls down from the bee, and then it goes back up and mixes with the clouds and makes the fluff. Because the bees are yellow and black and the yellow makes the fluff.

Iskra

7 / ENDING SOFTLY...

As we reach the end of the year, we can hear in the children’s thinking a new level of sophistication. They synthesise details and cross-connect experiences to make sense of the ‘snow-fluff’ phenomenon. They also tell archetypal stories of fluff and bees and forces and power. LEARNING SOFTLY means these different ways of understanding the world can sit comfortably side by side.

Wells offers a brilliant insight to carry forwards into next year. Considering the bark of a tree in the forest she discovers that SOFTNESS is also a choice and the power lies in our own hands:

Maybe soft goes with soft and hard goes with hard, because when we touch the tree in a hard way, it feels hard, when we touch the tree softly, it feels soft. It makes the hard go away.

Wells

Complex ideas in ‘soft’ interactions: choice, intention, relationship, proportionality, sensitivity, balance

The little fluffs are protecting the Queen Fluff. They go off and see where the others are and protect them - with fluff powers.

Wells

LEARNING SOFTLY is an ongoing research project. The chapter documented here was developed at the International School of Prague, during my role as atelierista/pedagogista.

I would like to thank the many children who contibuted their ideas, sensitivities, words, creations and collections. I also thank my colleagues and collaborators, the class teachers for the five and six year olds: Allison Bryan, Nina Radcliffe, Nellie Gibson. Nellie especially helped me understand how neighbouring classrooms can be connected in soft ways to produce deep and delightful project-based learning.