What did you infer about the atelier as a language-filled place? Watching these clips with the same group of early childhood teachers as before, we found the Sinking Flower story to be truly delightful and a good example of the on-the-spot storymaking in play that contributes mightily to the young child's developing sense of story. It shows turn taking between the two girls, collaborating on a topic, and sequencing as the two girls build the story of the sinking flower. The unfolding of the story pushes the pair to use language as a means of clarifying (“Is that the water?”) and explaining (”The flower is staying up forever. Why is that?”), and in the end, for resolving (“It sinked.”). This dynamic, active language experience of storymaking goes a long way in developing that sense of story that is a mainstay of reading comprehension.

In the same clip, there is also evidence of using language to identify an activity -- namely, “scribble-scrabble” -- offering up a golden opportunity to use language as a way to name and describe, and to build vocabulary. The identification of the “scribble-scrabble” technique places further language demands on these artists as well, for the need arises to explain what it is (“Is that scribble-scrabble?” “No.”), to speculate (“What if you do scribble-scrabble -- maybe it [the picture] will be so pretty.”), and to elaborate (“ I want to put all of these because they would make so pretty pictures.”). The Sinking Flower clip, as we saw it, was filled with the kinds of language opportunities that are the building blocks of literacy -- naming, narrating, and connecting experience with word.

Through our discussion, we came to see the Nobody clip as illustrating the use of language to solve a problem and, in this case, one closely related to literacy: how to spell a word. It starts with a leading question from the teacher: “How do you think you spell nobody?” And the two girls take it from there, predicting, analyzing and reasoning to match sound with letter. Assisted by the teacher, the pair spell out the word and in the process make connections between speech sounds and printed symbols. Once again, the play environment supported the use of language in ways that help children rehearse and practice the very skills they will need in future encounters with text.

What did our group conclude about the art studio as a language-filled environment? Granted, two clips provide only a glimpse of the teacher and child talk that goes on daily here. Nonetheless, the clips offer vivid examples of language in use and, on the assumption they are representative, led us to surmise that the art studio is a place filled with language in ways that lay the foundations for learning to read and write. Perhaps you inferred this, too, even as you recognized that the amount of evidence was slim.

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